The Dalek's Time Lord
by Dr.Dalek
Summary: After recieving the desperate cry for help of a young girl the Doctor finally meets a new companion and sets off on a new journey, full of danger, fear and confusion. If only he knew he's been watched righ from the start... Please note: Chapters that aren't suitable for younger readers (or might be disturbing) are rated on their own (don't worry, you'll be warned)
1. A new Journey

"Well, that's that then. All sorted out." And finally: "Allons-y."

The Doctor headed back to the levers and switches and started pressing buttons while watching the little lamps flashing up again. He denied the fact that he had been alone in his Tardis for… well, time, in fact, appears a bit different to a Time Lord. Humans might say: "I haven't seen her for years" or "He's gone for hours". But… when you see what IS, what WAS and what COULD BE, this whole thing is likely to become… wibbly wobbly timey wimey.  
Or in other words: It just doesn't matter. Fact was: he was alone and that was all. There could be other companions and there couldn't be. Perhaps he would meet someone the next… moment… or perhaps he would travel alone for some ti…  
_(The author sighs and tries to get back to the subject whilst mumbling: "Maybe I'm trying too hard…" Finally he clears his throat and feels reassured, that what he does right now is not as stupid as it feels and only half as humiliating)_  
Perhaps he would remain alone for… quite a time.  
Well that was it for the time factor…  
_(The author keeps grumbling and mumbling "God damn it!" until he seems ready to proceed with the story)_

It wasn't important if he was alone or if he wasn't, if it was right now or in… a little while. The question was: Did he want to be alone? Did he EVER want to be alone?  
At this time he would have made the mistake and maybe thought that it wasn't his decision and that it wouldn't matter after all if he was alone. It wasn't like he was searching for a special someone. Or just someone. He wasn't searching at all. And it wasn't even his choice, he thought.

But _(and believe him, the author bets his life this time)_ he would understand. In due course. Of course. Of course in due course.  
_(The author sighs again)_

Well, the Doctor didn't mind, that the author was slightly going mad. He didn't mind it all, because he knew what he would write and what he could write. And actually, it could be worse. Just a few thoughts were running through his head right now, such as "What to do with this lever?" or "Does this button need fixing?" or "How do I stop this annoying beacon from flashing all the time?" He held already the hammer in his hand and just needed to find the right place to smash it against something when…

The phone rang. HIS phone. His phone in his phone box. He stopped for a second. Of course. It WAS a phone box after all. But he didn't expect any calls. And even though he knew that anything could happen anytime he wasn't sure while something like this should be happening right now. At the moment he was – he checked his computer system – yes, at the moment he was nowhere. Nowhere in particular. So who could…?

After letting the phone ring the fourth time he came to the conclusion that the only way to find out who was calling was by picking up the phone. He put the hammer aside and interrupted the fifth ring and just listened.

"PLEASE HELP ME! PLEASE, SOMEBODY HELP ME! I'M SCARED!"

"Where are you?" he asked the female voice on the other side without giving it much thought. The irritating answer was a trifle softer: "I don't know."

After checking again on his Tardi's current position he didn't came up with more than: "Don't worry." He hadn't had any time to think of a wittier response. He had found a little planet in striking distance, one he hadn't visited for a long time. It wasn't possible that she could have called from down there, was it? Why should she call for his help, who was she even to call for his help? How did she knew that he was there?

"What's happening?" he asked to gain time, "Are you hurt?" He pulled some levers, picked the hammer up again, prepared the Tardis to land on a spot that was, hopefully, no too dangerous right now. He just had to make sure that there was even a spot where he could land. The contact was lost and the phone had gone dead. He hadn't even been able to locate from where she had been calling. But he was sure it must have come from the underneath planet.  
He tried to remain in an upright position whilst getting tossed and turned and shaken really bad. But finally he flung the doors of the Tardis open shortly after he felt assured that the landing was successful.

Contemplative he inspected the area. The vegetation had changed a bit although the temperature seemed to be the same as last time. And the sounds he could hear were… different. The planet seemed a lot noisier than ever before. But not as if there were more animals or creatures. In fact, he didn't see anything except for the… trees

The girl that had called for help sounded human, for all he could tell. And deep down he wasn't even sure if it was a girl. He didn't hold much interest for the…differences in the human body. In any body or anybody. He might have known much about the different species that existed in the universe but it wasn't his cup of tea with all the…bawdy thingies. He shivered. No, definitely not his cup of tea. Nothing wrong with the tea, of course, but the… He stopped and shook his head. No. Just no. He found it best not to even think about it anymore. He had other things to do, more important things. First of all he had to get out of the wood before he could start looking for…

He stopped. He had seen it. It wasn't standing still. It had moved!  
Slowly he moved away backwards from the putative trunk.  
Of course. He should have known. It was as if the whales fell from his eyes. There had never been trees on this planet. There was no forest at all. And the thing he had just veered away from wasn't a tree. It was a leg.

"Of course", he murmured "there must be more of them than I've ever seen." And slowly the legs began moving, pulling the giant hooves out of the boggy earth.

All eight legs in front of the Doctor belonged to one monstrous creature called Slibnear. Slibnears were huge, but fast creatures with bulky bodies and extremely well developed sight.  
Presumably they looked like horses. But just presumably. No one had ever seen them with their own eyes, not in full size. The primary cause of this might have been that not every life form can experience the advantages of being over 300 feet tall. And, actually, a lot of people weren't even interested in knowing what Slibnears looked like. It seemed to be best for all of them just to keep out of their ways.  
Because by no means were they harmless. Not that they were clumsy and would step on you, or your feet, like every average horse. The problem was that they were very nosy. And coltish, too. Which explained why the Doctor hadn't seen any other animals so far: these were the only ones left. They must have extirpated all other life forms. And the worst about it: Just unintended.  
Slibnears were overall peaceable creatures, they meant no harm. But although they could live to be more than a couple of hundred years old they remained sprightly and playful. Things that would move by themselves, things that were alive were especially fascinating and a lot more fun to play with.

Therefore the Doctor didn't want to stand too close to the single creature, although as long as it wouldn't lower its head to its feet it probably wouldn't even recognize him in this damp area.  
But still the Doctor found it best to watch it from a distance. And yet there seemed to be more of them, presumably a little herd was playing with a stone, kicking it around and passing it between these numerous legs. It was even fascinating to the Doctor how the Slibnears were still able to locate the ball and their own legs. Eventually one of them would lower its head and look for their toy; however the Doctor couldn't exactly make out what it looked like. But this seemed perfectly alright, he was clearly not interested in going any nearer to the Slibnears.  
Although their live stock seemed to decline, a strategy to help this species to survive hadn't been developed at this time. And probably never would. It wasn't like they weren't interested in reproduction, like panda bears. But it's not hard to imagine that reproduction was a little difficult for them, somehow there was always a leg getting in the way.  
Sometimes you can't help poor creatures and only feel sorry for them. Except the panda bears.  
_(The author clears his throat and promises the reader that this time he will really get on with the story)_

The Doctor kept thinking about the girl that was probably lost here, in the woods. Although the remark wasn't correct, due to the lack of wood, "lost in the legs" didn't sound right either. Why did she call for his help? What did she even do on this planet? Was she even human? How should he find her? He wasn't going to move any closer to the Slibnears, definitely not. But where could she be?  
It sounded so strange. A single girl lost on a planet inhabited by giant creatures?

Well, he figured he could ask her all this AFTER he had found her. The Doctor sighed. Travelling alone was really hard for him. There was no one he could explain things to, no one brought up the humanitarian issue… Blimey, he even had to ask all the stupid questions himself!  
He'd never thought he'd mind being alone, or more precisely, he had never thought he would get used to being accompanied. At that point it didn't matter anyway.

The Doctor kept trotting round on the boggy ground for quite a while, examining the district that didn't serve currently as playground for the Slibnears. Although the Doctor had to admit that for a dying breed there appeared to be a lot of Slibnears around here. And he wasn't quite sure if it was the right decision to just go wandering around that place while he had no idea where that girl could have been. Eventually he came to the conclusion that it was the best option just to go back to the Tardis. Maybe he could locate her by using its programs.  
"Oh great", he murmured. The Slibnears must have found the Tardis and it might have been interesting for a while- it was lying on its side and covered in mud. And although the Slibnears were still standing near it, that stone appeared to be a lot more fun to them…

The Doctor stood perfectly still, shocked, and his eyes gaped in horror. That wasn't stone.  
"Oh no, no, no, no, no!" the Doctor began mumbling nervously while approaching the giant creatures that had found the only other living creature on their planet.  
Without giving it much thought he pulled out his sonic screwdriver- not that he knew what he was going to do with it right now, but it was always the first thing he did. And it was probably not the worst thing to do right now.  
The Doctor began mumbling whilst trying to find a quick solution. "Slibnears are playful, they remain coltish, they want things that are fun to play with, if their lifeless their no longer of interest." He sighed and played brooding with his screwdriver, hoping that it would calm his strained nerves. "If their coltish their childish, they interact like children and children want what they can't have." His eyes fell on one of the Slibnears again that seemed to be the odd one out, standing alone and looking as sad as a massive version of a clumsy horse could look. It dawned on the Doctor. "But most of the children are cruel. They want what they can't have for a single reason: it's already in someone else's possession. No matter how non-descript it is." He paused for a second. "And that's it!"

Quickly he activated his sonic screwdriver when he had already spotted a lose mud covered rock, not too far away from the giant lonely creature. With just a little help of the screwdriver he was able to push it off the steady spot it was resting on till now. Not that the sonic screwdriver actually had moved it with some kind of invisible force. No, that would be magic. It just had moved the time a bit forward, not much actually, just so that it would start rolling. After all it's every rock's destiny to crumble away from the nice rock face that had become very dear to its heart over the years.

The plan proved to be a complete success – as soon as the rock had started moving it immediately attracted the attention of the separate Slibnear. And as soon as it pushed it around the others gathered near it as well, lowering their heads, examining the newly-discovered toy and started, after a few seconds of absolute silence, waging a fight for it.

The Doctor ran to the lifeless body and picked her up, frightened that he had been already too late. Her head was pressed back into the nape of her neck and just rolled over on his arm from one side to the other side, while he lifted her and gave her a worried look. To his surprise she didn't look half as bad as he had imagined, there were a few bruises and a little laceration, but nothing more. No dislocated shoulders, no contused laceration, no twisting of the spine... He had to admit that she still looked nice. More than nice, actually.  
The Doctor shook his head, irritated by the strange thoughts that seemed to be stuck in his mind. Although he was sure that they must have belonged to someone else.  
He pressed his hand against her neck- she was still breathing. The Doctor started running with the unconscious girl in his arms; he had to get her to a safe place and meanwhile should see to it that he didn't attract the Slibnears attention. He turned his head to make sure that the Slibnears weren't following him already, but he found them still bickering with each other.

All he still had to do now was getting to the Tardis and…  
He stopped and sighed. The Tardis was still lying on its side. "What to do..?" he mumbled while looking around. The girl's pulse was still low but she had started tossing and turning and breathed heavily while slowly opening her eyes. She squinted a few times but couldn't move at any rate; the Doctor figured that she was still aswoon. "It's alright", he mumbled. "You called me for help", he explained while kneeling down and carefully letting the girl rest on his lap. "I can't expect you to help me. But", he concluded after getting out of his coat and wrapping the girl in it, "A helping hand would really come in handy now." The girl turned her head around and presumably tried to look him in the eye. "It's alright now, I didn't mean it", he went on while approaching the Tardis "It was nothing but an extremely limp attempt to be humorous about it. And by the way: your right hand seems to be broken."

A warm yet strange feeling started do spread out inside her body, starting in her stomach region and arriving finally in her feet. With a great deal of effort she moved her hand left hand to the other side, touching her numb and algid fingers and holding her breath after accidently touching her battered wrist.

Eventually, and with a lot of grunting and groaning, the Doctor erected the Tardis and rushed to the muzzy girl who had recently discovered that she was still in one piece and that no limbs were missing, or at least she hadn't noticed so far.

"Come on then, that's a good girl."She was lifted by the Doctor with caution and she closed her eyes tight. He had wrapped one of his arms around her upper part of her body and her injured hand twinged like mad, leading her to writhing in pain and sobbing softly.

"Oh, don't worry darling" the Doctor tried to encourage her whilst he swung the door of the Tardis open "You're gonna be as good as new."  
"But I liked being myself" she sniveled, still deeply confused. The fact that she was now in some kind of room, that appeared to be bigger than it should be, didn't help either. Slowly she turned her head and had a look around.

The Doctor laid her down on the… weird, indeed very weird, floor and she seemed to be amazed that she could look right through it. There must be another floor under the floor of the floor.

_(The reader may forgive the author- he was definitely cracking up on this spot)_

"Where are we?"  
The Doctor didn't answer her question but advised her to hold on to something while he started the...  
"What's it called again?" she asked whilst gradually getting to her feet. "A Tardis", the Doctor repeated, "and I told you, you should hang on to something." He approached her hurriedly and guided her hands to a handrail. He reassured her: "Please, I want you to be safe" before he pushed buttons, pressed levers and started hammering on something.

The girl could feel the phone box taking off, although it seemed impossible, and with the last bit of strength she held on to the handrail. She closed her eyes- she got tossed and turned and spun around and the way this… thing floated in the air made her feel poorly.

"What was your name again?" the Doctor asked focused. "Green", answered the girl and tried to look at him directly. It only made things worse – she shouldn't have opened her eyes. She knelt down again and latched onto the handrail, telling herself that she had the worst nightmare now. Alright probably not the worst she had ever had. It wasn't dark, it wasn't cold and damp and there weren't any lizards.  
"Any first name?" asked the Doctor again. Although she knew she shouldn't have done it she turned her head in his direction again. "My name is Green", she repeated, "Green Hope."  
A muffled "Ah" escaped the Doctor but then there was nothing more than the sounds of the engines and his hammering from time to time. "And you are…who?" "Yeah, that's about it."  
"I beg your pardon?" she sure was dazzled due to his response, but she tried it again. "And what is your name?" She tried to straighten up a bit. Now the Tardis flew surprisingly unflustered.  
"The Doctor" was his only response and he showed no intention to complete his sentence.  
"Sorry, but…?" she asked again. "Oh, you don't have to feel sorry", he interrupted her. She tried it again: "What is your name?" "The Doctor" he repeated, "Look, can we move on to other things?" "You're "the Doctor"?" she asked. He nodded and concentrated on a computer in front of him. "Doctor what?"  
He sighed. "Nearly, but no." Eventually he continued: "But we can keep it this way, alright?"


	2. The Last

A new chapter's out and I dare to ask you for your opinion!

* * *

"You're the Doctor", Green took a few steps until she stood right in front of the Doctor. He nodded, giving her a scrutinizing look, pulled the sonic screwdriver out of his vest and pointed in her direction. Her blank look seemed as blank as a blank paper that had been lying in the rain for two weeks and had recently been dried out. "And this is your Tardis", Green continued, while the Doctor placed both hands on her cheeks and stared her deeply in the eye. "You seem a bit slow" he mumbled and carefully kept her eyelids open.

"Is this supposed to hurt?" she asked after she had tried getting comfortable with a… well, a strange man in front of her who was most likely curious about how long it would take for her eyes to dry out and fall out of their eye sockets.  
The Doctor released his grip and sighed unsatisfied. He didn't get the hint that she expected an answer from him and studied her silently. Green was getting nervous.  
"Is something wrong with me?" she asked quietly, "Please, answer me." "I don't know" he replied slowly "I'm not that kind of Doctor, you know."  
Green was completely lost. "But you're… then, what did you touch me for?"  
"Look, girl, I was just worried, that's all. I didn't mean to disturb you, or scare you or hurt you or anything." "What kind of a Doctor are you, Doctor?" Green didn't give in. She hadn't understood anything so far. She didn't know where she was, who he was, what had happened, why he had rescued her and WHO HE WAS!  
"I'm… I'm just the Doctor, that's all. Just nothing more –the Doctor, isn't that enough?" She nodded and seemed to agree with him.  
Finally, the Doctor thought. Still, he wasn't sure what he should do with her now. He probably should have told her not to ask any stupid question, or question him at all, but he swore he'd do it the next time he picked somebody up.  
"So, Green" he started whilst revealing the sonic screwdriver again, "that's a pretty name. Where do you come from?"

Green froze, her eyes wandered around to find something to stare at. "I… I don't... know…" "But you're human, aren't you?" the Doctor held the screwdriver up to her head and turned it on. She backed away, shaking her head irritated. "Of course I'm human, what kind of a question is that?" she gave the sonic screwdriver a suspicious look. "What is that thing?" she asked skeptical, "What does it do and what is it supposed to do with me?"  
"It's a… a screwdriver. A screwdriver, see?" the Doctor turned it on and pointed in her direction, the distance between them became bigger as Green stepped backwards. "Why does it glow? And what caused those strange sounds?" she went on. "It's a sonic screwdriver. Alright, it may not be that sort of screwdriver you're tightening screws with. Actually, you can do a lot more with it…" "Have you ever tightened a screw with it?" she snapped. The Doctor gave her a blank stare.  
Green sighed and closed her eyes. "Sorry", she mumbled, "It's… I don't know… I'm just…" She took a deep breath and had a look around. She didn't know where she was. And for some reason she didn't even feel uncomfortable, which was actually something to feel uncomfortable about. Alright, she felt uncomfortable but she could imagine that this was a place where you were able to feel good...at home, where it was cosy… a snug place on the whole.  
She asked herself if this could be a place where someone actually lived. Something like a home.

"I'm sorry", the Doctor said eventually. "I didn't want to disturb you. It's alright; you don't have to explain anything."

He riveted on the Tardis again and pulled some levers. "It's strange, though", he went on while he seemed to look for something in particular around the center of the Tardis "The first thing people always want is to be brought back. Well, 'til now." "I have nowhere to go", she cut him off sharply, as if her voice was nothing more than a blade and her words had long pointy teeth. "And besides, I don't want to go back where you found me. I didn't like it there very much." "That's not what I meant" he tried to explain. "Who am I to ask something of you?" she went on. "I might as well be grateful if you don't hurt me."  
"I supposed someone has hurt you before" he continued, picking up the hammer, "someone who was not from your world. Someone strange…someone…" "Please stop it!" she interrupted with a low voice. "I don't want you to talk about it."  
The Doctor turned around. Green had her mouth covered by her forearm and turned her head aside. She didn't want him to see her cry, although she wasn't crying right now. But on the road of life she was driving towards crying-fit-city at high speed and had already ignored two stop signs.

"I'm sorry I brought this up", the Doctor explained appalled, "I didn't mean to let you recall the bad things that happened." He moved a bit closer and offered her the hammer. "If you want to, you know, you can just…" Green opened her eyes wide and gave him a confused look. Then she sniffed twice but she was unable to stifle a laugh. "What? What is it?" the Doctor asked "I simply wanted you to feel better." She nodded and calmed down. "You're just so… nice…in a curious way." She accepted the hammer and bowed.  
"Oh stop it, you don't have to do that", the Doctor patted her on the back. She nodded.  
"Can I be any help?" Green asked, "I mean I've seen you before how you swung it around, looking for the right spot." She took a closer look at the hammer she was holding. "Do you actually need it to fly this thing?" she wondered. "I don't know" was the Doctor's reply "But it wouldn't feel half as good without it. Come, I'll help you." He moved closer and touched her hands, tightening her grip around the hammer. Together they lifted it and smashed it against some kind of metal hemisphere once or twice – it produced a gentle clinking sound.  
Green laughed out of joy - somehow she felt unburdened, even though she felt pretty dumb. But somehow it was different for her to feel dumb with somebody and not in front of somebody.

"See, I told ya" the Doctor sighed, "makes you feel better every time." Green looked for a safe spot where she could sit for a while without being twirled around all the time, but she wasn't sure if there was such a space. Getting tossed and turned seemed to be a fixed component of the Tardis. Whatever it was.  
" So, where are we going?" the Doctor asked Green expectant. She looked puzzled. "You ask… you're asking me?" He nodded grinning like a Cheshire cat that got hit on the head by the mad hatter too many times and Green wouldn't have been surprised if he had disappeared a moment later.  
"You're not human, are you?" she asked puzzled. The grin didn't vanish and neither did the Doctor, which was a bit of a relief to Green.  
"Well, no, not really, no, not human at all, except you're referring to human as in "humanity", then I'd say about…mh… yeah, right, could be." Green nodded hopelessly. It wasn't like she was hopeless or that there was less hope for her, but it seemed as if the Doctor was such a hopeless case she felt hopelessly hopeless. _(Or maybe it was just the author this once. He gets himself confused and mixed up with different characters all the time. But don't let him disturb you – carry on!)_

Green looked at the grinning Doctor. "Still haven't answered my question, did you?" he tried to assist her memory and repeated, "Where do you want to go?" "I don't understand what you mean", she sighed a bit on the edge, "What are you talking about?" "You came with me. Well, not that you had much of a choice, it was just like kinda the strange man or the Slibnears…" "Slibnears?" Green interrupted him. "Yeah, you know, tall creatures, big hooves, more legs than necessary, pushed you around like a toy and wrecked your… hang on, wait a minute…" The Doctor grabber her hand and stroked his fingers lightly across her wrist. She hushed a muffled "Ouch" and clenched her teeth. "Sorry about that", he mumbled while bandaging her wrist with something that looked somehow like an old fabric strip that had been lost for centuries – and it even smelled like that.  
"Just wanted to make sure it is the right hand. I mean, of course it is the right hand, because it's you're right hand on your right arm, but I wasn't sure if the right one was the right one."  
He gave her a big smile but Green had nothing to reply but a scared look. The Doctor cleared his throat and changed the subject quickly.  
"Slibnears", he explained, "are creatures of enormous height. They live to be up to 300 feet tall each of them has eight giant legs. The name Slibnear originates from "Sleipnir", the eight legged horse of the god Odin in the Norse mythology, due to their similar appearance. Although it isn't in fact very wise to stand too near to a Slibnear because there's a strong possibility that it might mistake you for a toy…" he looked Green deeply into the eye "…which was, in your case, indeed the case. They meant no harm. They were only… curious." "Curious about what?" she asked puzzled. "Curious about how long you would last and whether or not your body would stay in one piece" the Doctor explained and added a small "Sorry" as well. Green nodded but closed her eyes in disgust. "Then why did you say that they meant no harm?" she asked. The Doctor raised his eyebrows: "Well, you know, it's not like they want to hurt anybody or anything…" "So they don't do it on purpose" Green added, "And then it's okay? I mean…Why does that even make a difference?" The Doctor remained silent. He held his peace, staring into space (figuratively, not literally, he thought it to be too dangerous to open the Tardis right now) and got lost in his own thoughts, in his own memories. Well, what difference did it make indeed?

"I mean, I don't care about why they do it. After all, it's all a matter of perspective concerning what you know, what you see fit, what you're intentions are… it's a question of attitude. It's a question of your own personality."

An old ember started glowing in the dark depths of his eyes. At first it was nothing more than a glimmer in the endless gloominess of a Time Lord's mind but soon the fire illuminated. Fire…  
The Fire, the heat, the smell of black powder, the stench of burnt hair and flesh, the flashing lights in the eternal night of the war, in every time in every form, in every word and every thought, the war that dragged on and on and on, that war without an end, that would never end…  
…until…  
Someone saved them all. Or left them for dead.  
Either way, the Doctor thought, she was right. It's all a question of your own personality.

"Doctor?" Green asked doubtfully. "Doctor, is everything alright? Doctor?"  
The Doctor opened his eyes again, fast and yet… his eyelids seemed to move slower, tired from all the years of knowing, all the years of mindless hope and assignments of guilt, justified or not. And all of that, the silent hope, the endless fear, the oppressive soleness –  
All gone in a blink.  
Green took a closer look.  
Well, not all of it.  
The Doctor opened his eyes wide again, looking as disordered as before. "Oh… Oh! I'm sorry; I didn't mean to listen… No, I did mean to listen but there was suddenly this…" He gave in. "I'm sorry, dear" he sighed, "I'm very sorry. It's been a long day for both of us. Well, two days actually."  
"Two days?" Green repeated doubtfully. "What do you mean, two days?" "You were kind of unconscious while I dragged you in" the Doctor explained, "and you probably remember holding on to that handrail over there. Point is you didn't leave that spot for nearly a day. You were too weak to move so you just knelt there holding on to a rail." Green gave him a suspicious look. "And I thought it best not to disturb you" the Doctor concluded.  
Green started muttering: "But it was like… I didn't even feel it. The time passing, a day going by… where did it go by?" "It must be still on the way, we must have left it behind and I guess it just didn't move fast enough to keep up with us" the Doctor explained humorously. Green sat down on the floor again. Although she had spotted some kind of seating-accommodations by now, she had to admit that she felt pretty comfortable on the floor.  
"Time's a strange thing, you know" the Doctor knelt down, pulled on his shirt and adjusted it until it seem to feel comfortable and sat down beside her "and it's possible that it's even worse here, in the Tardis." Green gave him a doubtful look. Not, that anything would have shocked her today. Or yesterday, because, like he had explained, it wasn't the same day it was yesterday. Green took a deep breath. She was going mad and she knew it.  
The Doctor suspected that it had something to do with his statement so he finished: "Well, it's a time machine." Although he doubted that she would accept this as an explanation.

Green nodded silently, her eyes fixed on the non existing door she saw before her in her mind. If it was just that easy, if only she could find a way to escape this… dream? Was it a dream? What was this place?  
The whole THING was too strange for a dream, to dumb for a nightmare and too unrealistic even for a daydream.  
She sighed. "I am dead, aren't I?" she asked no one in particular.  
"Well, you know, I'm afraid I have to disagree with you" the Doctor suspired "You see, I've been unable to die for, mh, quite a long time now and it would be too good to be true to find myself deceased and yet accompanied by a young and gorgeous girl like you." Green looked at his expressionless face and gave him a startled stare. "Sorry, I didn't mean to insult you", the Doctor added, "Thought you wanted a good explanation to prove that you're still alive." Green nodded. Still she had to wonder what the bad explanation would have sounded like.  
Quietness filled the room except for the monotonous sounds of the flying Tardis.

"We're in a time machine" Green broke the silence. The Doctor looked her over unemotional and nodded. "And you can't die", she added. "Failed quite a lot of times" he corrected.  
"I guess I have to believe you anything you tell me" she concluded and sighed crestfallen. "No, you don't have to" the Doctor shook his head "Nobody listens to what I say. But you'd be well advised to follow my instructions." She sighed again. "Naw, but don't worry about that. Nobody ever does that. And in the end it could be worse" he conceded. Green sighed and nodded again.

"So" the Doctor took the floor again, and even took the floor literally under his feet again as he stood up and started stretching "What are we doing now?" He turned around to the silent girl. "Where do you want to go?"  
Green seemed as absentminded as the day before, where she had had her arms wrapped around the handrail and kept mumbling something about not enjoying the rising sun enough and the sunset and the storms and the weather on the whole, except for the rain and that she hated rain because there had been too many meteorological disturbances round the city she had lived in, and that there had always been floods and that the neighbor's cat drowned once, and that it was a lovely-fluffy little kitten.  
The Doctor had to admit that he wasn't quite sure that moment if she wasn't already brain-dead. Nobody would care that much about a drowning cat.  
Though, it was strange. Now she seemed alive but didn't say a word.  
The Doctor sighed and knelt down again. "Don't you have anywhere to go to?" he asked. Green shook her head, her eyes fixed on the door of the Tardis.  
"Is there a place you've always wanted to see? Any travel destination?" The Doctor was on his wit's end. There had been people who had begged him to retrieve them. And there had been those who wanted to travel with him. But she…?

"Don't YOU have anywhere to go to?" she asked, still with her eyes focused on nothing in particular. "Not really. Not until my help is needed." "I didn't mean to call you" Green added hoarsely "and therefore I'm sorry." "Well, I don't care" he snapped "You don't have to be sorry for that. I was there, received your call and could help you, that's enough. You don't have to stay here with me, I don't need you. Or anybody. I can drop you off everywhere you like."  
Green nodded, her eyes were swelling up with tears. The Doctor sighed. "And I didn't mean to say it like this."

"Oh, I don't care", she whispered. "I don't care about that. I just don't… You can't give me…" She took a deep breath and suppressed her tears. "I don't have anywhere to go. There is nothing for me." The Doctor moved closer, carefully and yet caressing. Empathetically he brushed her hair out of her face and looked her deep into the eye. Green remained ineloquent.  
Quickly the Doctor pulled out his glasses and put them on, without taking his eyes off her. He was serious, probably the first time in her presence. He treated this subject very sympathetically.

"Tell me about it, Green" he asked in a low voice, "What's happened?" "I'm alone" she repeated grim and watery-eyed, hanging her head in endless sorrow. Caring the Doctor touched her cheeks and whipped away the first tears that had escaped her overflowing eyes. "Why are you alone, Green?"  
"Because there's nobody left. Nobody else but me. They're gone. They're all gone. And they didn't take me with them…" her whisper was broken by a deep and heart wrenching sound, an unbearable and inhuman screak. She couldn't control her emotions anymore, neither her voice. The Doctor held her head against his shoulder and stroked her neck. Green sobbed ad infinitum, rubbing her head against his jacket and spilling her tears on his hand while he tried to touch her cheeks softly. "I was the only one. They left me for... They wouldn't take me with them…" a few sustained sighs interrupted her unreckoned, she felt ashamed for herself. "I'm the last. The last who survived."  
The Doctor grasped her in his arms. Green tried holding her breath to stop her from sniveling all the time. "It's alright, dear", he mumbled, "I understand."

"I'm so sorry" Green whispered whipping her tears away, "I didn't want to…" "No, dear, it's fine", the Doctor interrupted her "I have full understanding for everything." Green sat up again and the Doctor just now realized that he was holding Green's injured hand tightly, but she hadn't even noticed. "I'm so sorry for your sports jacket" she spoke under her breath. "Naw, it will come off", the Doctor assured her and touched her hand carefully. "But don't feel embarrassed" he added, "do never ever do that. It's alright having a good cry on a stranger's shoulder, nothing wrong with that." She snuffled. "No, really, I mean it. It's alright. We all need that, from time to time." And with a much darker undertone he added:  
"And I know how you feel."


	3. Allons-y!

_**A new chapter! Please let me know what you think about it :D**_

* * *

The Doctor stepped over her for the second time. She ignored him. Green suspected that this room was the only room in the Tardis, even though it was a giant room for such a small box. But nevertheless, Green didn't like about it that there was no opportunity to retreat from him.  
After stepping over her the third time the Doctor stopped beside her and lowered his head. "Are you sure you're alright there?" he asked. "I'm fine" she responded numb. "Actually I'm having a bit of a hard time preparing the Tardis to land and not stepping on you at the same time" he sighed and knelt down beside her. "I told you not to worry about the jacket", he confirmed her, "That's no problem at all. Really. I mean it." He looked at her expectantly: "Are you ready to stand up now?" Green shook her head. The Doctor sighed again.

"Why don't you just stamp me down?" Green mumbled peevishly "Why don't you shorten my time of tribulation?" The Doctor took his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket again. "You're still sure you're alright?" he asked worriedly while holding the sonic screwdriver down to her head. It already started making those strange buzzing noise.  
Green sat up. "You were planning this, weren't you?" she counter questioned "You wanted to upset me 'til I would get out of your way." "No, I just wanted to assure you that I'm not mad at you for crying on my favorite jacket." "What did you say that for, then?" Green asked aghast, "I didn't know it was your favorite." "Like I told you before: it doesn't matter" the Doctor tried to appease her, "Blimey, you want me to be mad at you, won't you?"

"I guess it's only human" she replied. "Well, I'm not" the Doctor responded and sat down. "Doesn't surprise me at all", Green added.  
After she had taken a deep breath and lowered her voice she continued: "But for an alien you look really unspectacular. You know… nearly human. Not your behaviour of course, for God's sake, no!" The Doctor hat to admit he was a bit emotionally affected. And although he had survived many dangerous attacks no weapon had hurt him as bad as a girl's remark about his nature.

"I'm sorry if I offended you", Green added hurriedly, "I didn't mean to." He nodded. It hurt. It really hurt.  
"What kind of an alien are you?" she asked curiously. "A civilized one" he explained.  
"What makes you think that?"  
"Because I haven't tried to bite your head off or something you'd expect from an alien." In a lower voice the Doctor added "I hope I'm not a great disappointment." Green got the hint.  
"I wasn't insulting you" she explained and tried to change the subject: "You know, you don't have to be that… orange and slimy and…" "Okay, I get it", the Doctor interrupted "Let's drop the subject." "And what are you, precisely?"  
The Doctor sighed. "There's no way of stopping you, is there?"  
"I'm sorry", Green mumbled, "I was only curious whether or…"  
"I'm a Time Lord" he responded "And before you're starting again: my home planet's name's Gallifrey. But I doubt that you've heard of it before." Green nodded attentively.  
"Is this some kind of title?" she asked curiously.  
"What?"

"The LORD thing about your "Time Lord". You know, is there some kind of hierarchy and…"  
"No, no, no, no" the Doctor interrupted her, "It's a species. I am a Time Lord."  
"I thought the planets name was Gallifrey" Green pointed out.  
"IS" corrected the Doctor but had to bite his lip and would gladly have chewed up his tongue and teeth ridge as well.  
"Why aren't you called…Gallifreyers?"  
"It's Gallifreyans" he corrected her again.  
"You've got two names for one species?" Green asked irritated.  
"Look", the Doctor tried to explain, "The name "Time Lord" is not so much title as characterization, okay? It helps you to understand what we do. And before you ask "What do you do?" I'll tell you right away after I've landed the Tardis, alright? And now please, please, hold on to something!"

Green was quick off the mark here, although she wasn't quick off the mark with being quick off the mark _(oh, what hilarious jokes the author has in store for his dear reader)_ and she had to admit that she was glad she hadn't tried to stand up. Kneeling on the floor didn't seem such a bad idea after the Doctor had flown by her at least twice. There were horrible crashing sounds, concussions, screeching, the Doctor hammering on something metallic, some levers were pushed, buttons pushed and after one big shock, which overthrew the Doctor, the ground seemed steady and there were no more sounds at all, except for a few anguished sighs of the Doctor, who tried to get to his feet again.

"Where are we?" Green wanted to know. "I haven't even answered your first question", the Doctor barked at her, "and there is it already: the next question." "No need for shouting", Green grumbled aggrieved "There are questions without an answer." "I know, but that one wasn't!" he replied. "How should I know?" Green asked uneasy, "According to how you fly this thing you certainly don't know what you do." "It is supposed to make those screeching noises", he disabused her.  
"Well, that's not the point" Green replied and got to her feet. She was feeling small now, very small indeed. She had felt bigger when she had been kneeling. It was something about the Doctor that made her feel minor. And short.  
"I… I didn't mean to…that wasn't what I meant, you know…I just…" She sucked in the air deeply, like an average student gobbles up every kind of even slightly alcoholic drink he can get.  
Green started all over again. "Do you know that kind of feeling, when you say something that sounds good in your head but when you finally say it…" The Doctor sighed and looked her over. "Happens to me all the time", he mumbled.

"I'm sorry for all the trouble I'm causing" Green thought she'd hardly get a word out, but there it was, the whole sentence, standing there and making fun of her for letting it escape. She sighed. Next thing it'd to was probably stealing money from her.

"You don't have to be sorry", the Doctor explained, "not at all. You know…" he stepped up to her and let his eyes scan her light-skinned face, "I'd never say that you'd be any trouble. Well, not right now, and definitely not as long as you're barely able to move your arms due to your injury, but… you get my point, don't you?" Green nodded and sighed. "That's a good gel" he patted her on the shoulder. "But I'm afraid we'll have to do some plain talking" he added in a lower voice "I don't mind your presence and I have to admit that your honest behaviour makes you very likeable, but… I'm afraid I can't help you." Green eyed him up puzzled. "You see, I don't exactly know what to do with you. You can't tell me neither were you want to go nor where you belong. Which is alright for me…"  
"I have nowhere to go", Green repeated, a bit more self-conceived. She had closed her eyes and opened them again slowly.

"So…"the Doctor continued, "How would you like to come along with me? You know, staying here for a while, following me, doing the alien stuff or whatever you'd like to call it. I wouldn't mind company or conversation…"  
Green nodded then shook her head. "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I don't quite understand."  
"You can stay here", the Doctor tried to explain, "in the Tardis. And outside the Tardis. With me. You know, just do what I do." "And what exactly is it you're doing?" Green finally asked again.  
"Do you know where we are?" the Doctor asked her. She shook her head. "Do me a favor and cast a glance at the outside." Green stood there, in equal parts distrustful and unsagacious. After a while the Doctor processed: "Just open the door. And look."  
She moved slowly towards the entrance door, she had no doubt that there could be a million doors hidden in this box – nothing seemed impossible anymore, except maybe getting a straight answer she would understand from the Doctor. Green pushed the creaking door open. Her eyes caught a glimpse of enormous grey mountains, of a gleaming sky hidden by wafts of mist, of clouds getting torn apart by the howling wind hundreds of miles above her head. She closed the door.  
She had seen it all; the dark complex towering above the strange sandy ground; she had even heard the distant squawking of birds after being stirred out of their sleep.  
All in one glance.

"It's beautiful" she mumbled then looked at the Doctor "Where are we?"  
"Basically we're on a little planet, infinitely far away from your planet earth" he checked his watch "and presumably in a different millennium. But not quite sure about that."  
"But how is this even possible?" Green asked doubtfully.

The Doctor took the time to sit down again, as well as Green, and tried to explain to her the inexplicable laws of time travelling, or in fact time itself, or at least the way he understood them. He talked about million billion universes; time zones, time lines, space-time and time continuum (which was basically the same just without the time), practically everything involving time and somehow all of it seemed to be glued together in one enormous complex, which consisted of everything that in existence as well as nonexistence. And from his point of view the Tardis was some kind of vehicle, able to stick itself to every possible time and location in the universe and leaving nothing but gluey traces now and then.

Green didn't know how serious this was and, in no way, how serious the Doctor took it. She hadn't understood anything so far and cut him off, afraid that sooner or later her head would explode after getting stuffed ruthlessly with innumerous nonsense.

"Wait" she yelled, "just slow down a minute. Hang on there. Just wait… I…I…" Green shook her head, hoping to deter the strange words that infiltrated her brain from filling up the spare room that had come to existence due to the gaps in her memory. "I'm afraid I can't follow you" she explained, "and I'm even more afraid that I might be able to follow you, proving that I've not only forgotten most of my past but had gone completely mad, too. So…" she paused and took a deep breath, which she felt she needed to look someone as insane as the Doctor directly in the eye "Ok. Could you try to explain this whole universe thing in one sentence? Perhaps without the wibbly wobbly and timey wimey things and whatsoever? Just, in a nutshell. Just: How is this all possible?" With an uncertain smile on her lips she looked at him expectantly.

The Doctor patted her on the shoulder. He should have known that for her it wasn't as simple as for him to understand and retrain a whole universe, or maybe two. Humans had a strange way of understanding, in fact: they wanted to understand things. They refused to accept, to approve and simply believe what they see. They want to know, what it is. And until they don't know what it is, it doesn't exist properly. Unless, of course, it's extremely persistent and obviously dangerous. The Doctor sighed. It hadn't taken the people of earth that long to acknowledge the existence of storms and floods. Earthquakes weren't that generally accepted, but they were working on that.

_(Please excuse the author's note about natural spectacles. Recently he had read a lot about it and, to the detriment of the reader, had enjoyed it more than he should have.)_

"Alright" he started again, "I'll try not to confuse you. Not more than necessary. Err… look, it's like this… What was it exactly you wanted to know?" "What a Time Lord does… and what a Time Lord is," Green responded politely. The Doctor nodded. "Alright. Ok. Let me start with this: The easiest way to explain time and space is by using the example of the trousers of time." Green attempted to open her mouth but the Doctor went on: "And by the way: No questions, no remarks and no doubtful looks while I'm explaining. You can save that for later. Got it, right? Just three rules and we'll be on good terms." Green nodded intimidated.

"There are the trousers of time, but just not one pair. On every spot, in every moment and second in the history of the universe existed a pair of trousers. And exists. And will exist. Look, important is to acknowledge their existence. There are times without trousers and there times when we need them, which doesn't sound as good as I thought it might would, but that's beside the point. Alright, I know, I know, all in a nutshell, just so much: There are points in history that can't be changed. They're predetermined and fixed. They have to happen no matter what." The Doctor looked at Green like a Christian wolf that is anxious for the fluffy little bunny it's going to devour to say its last prayer. Green didn't know what he expected from her and therefore nodded preventatively. The Doctor seemed to be satisfied with her gesture of approval and continued as Green respired quietly.

"It would be best to imagine the trousers of time as real pants. You know, with two legs and such. In one leg there's a time line, coming from what had been and going to what will be. Usually the time line will follow that leg but there's also the possibility for it to divert and take the other leg instead. The other leg represents the things that could be. But it can only be instead of that what actually is. And as a Time Lord I can see through them and that's what I do."  
Green nodded again but a bit more uncertain. "You look through pants?" she asked.  
The Doctor sighed and added sarcastically: "Yes, of course, I look through pants and that's what live is all about." "That sounds even weirder" Green mentioned in a low voice.

"Okay, listen, I'm afraid I'm unable to explain it to you. And I know it's going to be very hard for you, but if I can't get my ideas across to you, you'll simply have to believe me what I tell you. I'm afraid you can't prove it, or verify it and most of the time you won't even be able to see what I'm talking about. But that's it. If you believe me, it's going to be a lot easier for you, believe me. Or not. Alright, that sounded nearly as bad as the thing I had said before."  
"But how can I believe you, if I can't understand anything?" Green counter questioned.  
The Doctor paused for a moment and thought. Finally he responded: "You believe in people without understanding. Therefore it shouldn't be so hard to believe things you won't understand."

Green nodded silently. She wondered if he had intended to be offensive.

"So…" the Doctor restarted the conversation that had stopped, dropped and curled up before they had left the Tardis together. Green trotted quietly beside the Doctor who kept making remarks about the planet's surface she didn't quite catch. But it appeared to her, that the Doctor had needed someone who would listen to him. Actually, not really listen, just hearing what he said, comprehension was requested but not required. And it didn't seem so bad at all…

"Blimey, you're hardly saying a word", the Doctor complained, "Back in the Tardis you seemed unstoppable."  
"You can't be pleased, can you?" Green snapped and immediately would have hoped for a long string to pull the sentence word by word back into her mouth to lock it up in her brain again.  
"Okay...", the Doctor breathed out, a bit confused, "I thought that to be out of the question."  
"I'm sorry", Green mumbled while blushing, although it appeared to be illogical to empurple when one's name was "green".  
"Naw, don't worry about that" the Doctor tried to appease her, "that's the trouble with the human nature. Unambiguously ambiguous. It's reflecting in the language, can't help that."

Green nodded and watched with fascination what had to be a sunset. A light, grey mist hung over the dark complex that, she imagined, was a giant city. The air was filled with strange sounds, distressful as well as naturally. The orange sky glistened in the dusk, the sun sent its last rays to touch Green's and the Doctor's face, before it became a distant shimmer, chasing away the thin wisps of fog that seemed to approach them.  
Before Green had been silent because she had been afraid of the Doctor. Now she was awed.

"I'll tell you what" the Doctor went on, disturbing the moment, "you can ask me everything you want. Anything, anytime. Keep firing those questions on me unless they're too sharp." He winked at her and Green had to smile.  
"What planet is this?" she asked.

"Well, it was known to be Annivdet Tand, short TANN. Strange name, I know. Was supposed to be some kind of joke for it was the tenth planet that had been inhabited by humans." He took a careful look at Green and corrected himself, "alright, nearly humans. We're at least two thousand times ahead of your time."

He swallowed, watched Green from the corner of his eyes and added in a lower voice "At least the time I thought you'd belong to." "I'm from the 1990's" she explained, but pressed one hand shortly after answering against her temples. "At least I thought so…"she mumbled. She sighed and gave the Doctor a charming smile.  
"I'm really sorry", the Doctor grumbled while he grit his teeth, "I wish I knew how to help you." "Thank you, I'm fine" Green responded hurriedly, "You don't have to try anything on me. It's alright. I'm feeling good." The Doctor nodded but kept an eye on her.

"It's the screwdriver, isn't it?" he asked. Green felt embarrassed.  
"There's nothing to be afraid of. It's completely harmless, see?" The Doctor held up the sonic screwdriver and activated it. Green stepped away and pressed her palms against her ears. "What a terrible sound" she moaned after the Doctor had stopped. "And I'm sorry, but I'm not really convinced. You're an alien. No wonder it doesn't harm you." "It has never done any harm to anybody" the Doctor replied and left out that he had been able to paralyze creatures with it before. "You rescued me with it. You made that stone fall to the ground" Green added but had to take a closer look at it. "Is this your weapon?" The Doctor nodded. "And it hasn't harmed anybody so far?" The Doctor shrugged.  
"How is this supposed to be a weapon?"  
"It's got multiple functions, like… sending noise waves to distract enemies or…"  
"No, stop right there", Green interrupted him and faced him stunned; "this is a weapon. And YOU were pointing it at my head?!" "It's not a weapon in the way you're thinking of it", the Doctor replied but Green shook her head. "What were you trying to do?" "Nothing!" "What did you do with a weapon aiming at me?" "I didn't do anything" he defended himself, "Look, it's just a sonic screwdriver, it makes noises and it can be useful at some point. But it has never done any harm."

"And how do you defend yourself with a screwdriver?" Green asked. "I don't have to defend myself…"  
"And if you have to?" she repeated empathically.  
"Basically, I run."  
Green trotted beside him again. "You look like the kind of…thing that attracts danger" Green mumbled worriedly. "I've been in rather precarious situations before" the Doctor answered, half to himself. "And you made it?" Green asked. The Doctor looked down at her, then himself and then her again. "Is this really what you wanted to ask?" he asked the same moment Green answered "Stupid question, I know."  
Silence filled the air as they got closer to the dark city. The quietness seemed so thick that you wanted to cut it into pieces with a sharp knife just to force it to make any sounds at all. Green breathed anxiously and became short of breath.  
"Are you worried?" the Doctor asked calm but honestly. Green nodded as a knee jerk reaction.  
_(Although it was more her head that reacted and not her knees. But that's beside the point.)_

"Are you?" she asked back. The Doctor thought for a moment, then answered: "No, not really. I don't think so. Haven't seen anything so far that should worry me. But…" He stopped. "But maybe that's what I should be worried about. There's always something to worry about when there's nothing to worry about."  
"You're not making any sense" Green replied worriedly. "You see, Green, when you know what's there, what's around you and what you're afraid of, and then you know what you can worry about. The problem is, just because you can't see what you should be afraid of doesn't mean that it isn't there." "So what?" she asked, "I'm gonna waste a good scare, that's all." "No" the Doctor disabused her, "that's not the point. You've got to think the other way round." "Around what?" she asked. "Around the globe. Or just the corner. Or maybe around this." The Doctor had stopped in front of a giant black gate that seemed to lead into the heart of the city. "An entrance of a city?" Green thought out loud "what would you make that for?" "It's not the entrance that matters" the Doctor went on and pulled out his sonic screwdriver "it's the question if, whether or not there's an exit." He turned on the sonic screwdriver and moved it a few inches away from the metal gate.  
Green folded her arms.  
"So what does it do?"  
"It tells me all I need to know about the properties and conditions of the object I'm scanning."  
"And what does it say, Doctor?" she went on.  
"That there's no lock on the gate."

He kicked it open and continued his journey through a narrow alley. Green waited a moment doubtfully and eventually followed him. "I really don't think we should be going" she pointed out. "Oh, there's nothing to worry about. In fact, that it's getting darker IS something to worry about. And that's great. So you know what it is you're worrying about. No more nameless worries and faceless anxieties. Real well-founded fear. Isn't that great, Green?"  
Green had trouble following him. "I still don't think I understand it" she replied. "Oh, don't worry about that. You'll understand in time." "Why?" she asked panic-fuelled, "What's wrong?" "Nothing" the Doctor assured her, "Nothing to worry about."

"Doctor I have a question" Green gasped. The Doctor had stopped in order to give her the chance to give her time for a breather. Green had to admit that he moved too fast for her and she didn't even know why he was in such a hurry.  
"I can see that you've been running from a lot of trouble" she breathed deeply, "but what do you do when you actually get caught? How have you managed to escape so far?" The Doctor thought for a moment silently. Then he explained: "I took a deep breath and closed my eyes." "That's it?" she asked, "that's your plan for escaping?" "Mark my words. You close your eyes, take a deep breath and then open them again. And you see clear. Probably it's death staring you in the face, or a dangerous opponent. But, you know, you don't want the last thing you see to be a blurry vision of something that you know is gonna take your life away. It's best to look danger in the eye, so it can't surprise you."

Green stared at him. Wondering. Worried. She found that there wasn't even a word to express what she felt right now, except for something like great horror that she had to be rescued by a mad man-alien-thing-or-something.

"Come on", the Doctor said and started running again, "Allons-y!"  
"What's that supposed to mean?!" Green began to move as quickly as she could. It was hard to keep up with the Doctor and she could never tell which way he would turn next. He didn't seem too sure about which the right way was, but she was confident that he thought to know that there WAS a right way. Which obviously wasn't there.  
Green stopped. "Doctor?" She coughed. "Where did he go?" she mumbled and gasped. "Doctor, can you hear me?" A distant "I'm over here" reached her ears. "Doctor, where are you?" she asked and turned around. It was dark in the alleys. Too dark. The sunset must have vanished in a minute or two.  
"It depends on where you're right now", the Doctor shouted back, "Don't worry, I'll be right back."

She heard footsteps. Distant mumbling and calm breath. Behind her. She turned around.

"Doctor?"

There was no one behind her. In fact, nothing at all. She must have blacked out.  
Panic-stricken she tried to look around, to turn her head, her face, to reach and touch something with her eyes…  
She blinked as a sudden noise stroke her mind.

Silence.  
She was in her room. Her own room. She was home. At home. Finally home...

* * *

_**and she didn't even know how she endet up there!  
That's all for now.  
By the way: anybody got the "joke" about the name of the planet? I'll give you a hint: it's an anagram.  
First one to post it gets a cookie ;)  
Thanks for reading**_


	4. Breathe underwater

Green gasped. She was still short of breath, although she couldn't quite remember where she had been running to…  
She turned around unbelievingly. There she was. Back home. Safe. After those strange occurrences and incidents that had haunted her for the past… had it been weeks? Or months?

Green opened her door and was a bit surprised to find the corridor in her parent's house. The last time she had set foot in this house was…  
She couldn't remember. Her amnesia seemed as worth as before and her condition hadn't improved, which was a bit of a relief. Otherwise she would have been forced to get the impression that she had lost a few weeks in just one blink. But fortunately this wasn't the case.

Green explored the house as if it had changed, as if it was something new. But it wasn't new, there was nothing even slightly different, it was her parent's house. After all. The same.  
Green overcame a strange feeling. Back in the Tardis she hadn't been able to remember what the house did even look like. Now it was there and she could remember it so well it couldn't be true.

Maybe it was just her imagination. Green smashed her hand against a wall and held her breath for a minute but finally she gave up and let out a cry of pain. Okay. The house was real. At least as real as she was right now.

But how did she end up here? One moment ago she was with the Doctor on a different planet and poof – there she was back home and all alone. She pressed an ear against the wall that separated her room from the bathroom. Probably she wasn't even alone. Someone was having a shower next door.

There was nothing unusual about that. She shared the upper residential level with her brother, and to her disgust, they were forced to share the same bathroom. It would never have occurred to her to open the door right now and have a look, if he was in there.  
Not that it would have bothered her to see her brother in the nude. No, it was the other guys, whom he had allowed to have a shower without letting her know. Green blushed at the mere thought of it.  
That day it had felt as if the temperature inside the bathroom had risen just because of the heat radiating from her red face.  
She shook her head. What a terrible memory. Suddenly amnesia didn't seem so bad after all.

Her parents weren't home, which didn't surprise her. They had never been home much. The kitchen was empty, and nothing eatable was to find either, and this was probably her brother's fault too. The telly was still on and she didn't even bother to turn it off. Her brother was probably in the next room and would otherwise shout "I was watching this!"  
She sighed. Being home again was strange. It had only been a few minutes and already felt as if she had never left the routine. She sat down on the uncomfortable couch. The Doctor had told her that he moved in time and space. If so: how long had she been gone? Did anyone notice?  
Although it was strange: it wasn't a shock being back again. Green couldn't even remember how she ended up on the first planet anyway. Maybe there were some kind of holes in the space-time continuum and if you weren't careful enough you could fall right into it, like in the rabbit hole. And usually you just broke a leg, but she had to be like stupid Alice and end up in another dimension.

Green tried to convince herself that it had all been a dream. But somehow she knew that it was real…  
She wondered where the Doctor was right now. IF it was possible to be somewhere at some time for a Time Lord. Green couldn't quite remember but she had learned something back then in school about probability distributions and so what. The uncertainty principle worked for the quantum theory and perhaps even for Time Lords.

The splashing noises in the upper floor had stopped. Green looked up and ran over the stairs. Someone was here.

She stopped in front of the bathroom's door and listened.  
Silence.  
She moved up a bit closer and pressed an ear against the door.

"Could you please tell me if there are any towels?"

Green winced at the friendly and somehow familiar voice from inside the room.  
"How do you know I'm here?" she asked and could have banger her head against the door for being stupid enough to ask such a question.

"I heard someone coming over the stairs" the voice said smoothly, "Do you know where I can find a towel? I'm afraid I got soap in my eyes." "Then I hope that you'll still be able to see them" she mumbled and answered aloud: "in the white shelf to your right. Or left. Are you facing the wall right now?" "I can't see if I'm facing anything…" Green sighed. "Try to touch the wall." "Yes." "Are you facing a tilled wall?" "Yes, I think so." "Then it's on the right" Green explained and sighed again.

Why did her brother always bring home those idiots?

"Where "on the right"?" the voice asked hurriedly while Green walked towards her room. "It's in an open drawer to your right. You can't miss it." And even if you do miss it, I can't help you, she thought.

She closed the door and collapsed into her bed. It was soft. It cushioned. She closed her eyes.  
The duvet smelled like fresh laundry and a washing agent she had loved when she was a child. A light breeze slipped through the slightly ajar window.  
Green sat up again. Being back home seemed to help her regaining her memories. But something was still missing. Something wasn't quite right. Or maybe it was the other way round. She felt strange REMEMBERING all those things. If she looked to the right she'd think: Of course, the standard-lamp had always been there. But if she closed her eyes she couldn't even recollect what pictures were in the frames on the shelves. She just knew it because she saw it.

Without a knocking without the door opened. Green sat up. "Sorry for bothering you again" the Doctor said, "but where do I put the towels now?"  
Green stared at the Doctor in shock and then at crumpled towels in his hands.  
"There's a laundry basket beside the washing machine" she replied and the Doctor left her room instantly.

"That's a nice house" he remarked conversationally "are you living alone?"  
"No" she replied, "My brother still lives here." She paused. "Didn't I tell you?"  
The Doctor entered the room again and closed the door quietly. "No" the Doctor answered, "but you haven't done much talking so far, have you?"  
"Why were you having a shower?" she asked. "I was feeling a bit sweaty" he replied but gave her a doubtful look "Why, didn't it help?" He sniffed on his clothes and shrugged. "Could be worse, I guess…"  
"I wasn't referring to that" she cut him off. "I was only… curious."

"You room looks nice" the Doctor mentioned. Green nodded but had to ask: "Why do you say such nice things?" "Well, I guess it would have been impolite to say that the curtains aren't to my taste" he responded. "You don't like it, when I'm nice, do you?"

"I never would have imagined that "nice" even existed in your vocabulary" she mumbled.  
The Doctor sat down on her bed beside her.  
"Doctor, how did we end up here?" Green asked "Why am I home?"  
"Didn't you want to be home?" he asked. She thought for a moment. She shrugged. "I can't remember. But you're not answering my question. Why are we here?"  
The Doctor stared at the walls in her room. "I don't have the slightest idea" he answered absent mindedly. Green folded her arms.  
"But anyway" the Doctor continued and got to his feet again, "that won't provide us with further help, so…"The Doctor examined her room. Green sat still on her bed. To her surprise she wasn't even thinking right now. Or, to be exact, she wasn't thinking much right now.

The Doctor had assembled some of her personal belongings on her writing desk. Currently he fumbled with some small stuffed animals he had found on a drawer.( Although their stitched faces gave the impression that they were peaceful, underneath in their padding they were pretty uneasy for being deterred from collecting dust.)  
"So" the Doctor tried it again, "we tried to enter the city on TANN, when you made aspersions concerning my screwdriver and I tried to explain the meaning of worries to you, when…"  
He turned around to Green. "Are you listening?" She nodded. "You don't seem to be all with it." Green nodded again, but then looked up at him. "All with what?" she asked.

"All with it like in "with all your heart" but the other way round." He approached and gave her a scrutinizing look, "Green, what's wrong?" Green shrugged.  
"I'm sorry Doctor. But I don't know."

The Doctor sighed: "Anyway… You tried to keep up with me but fell behind. You know, Green, I've told you before that we could be on good terms if you follow my instructions but I'm not…" The Doctor stopped and turned around to her again. Green hardly noticed him  
"Green?" he asked doubtfully. "Yes Doctor, I'm still here" she suspired. He looked her in the eye and shook his head, as if he wanted to convince her that something elementary had gone wrong.

"Green, what did you feel when I asked you for the towels? Were you frightened when you realized that there was someone else in the house?" "I recognized your voice" she answered "And no, I'm not really used to being alone."  
The Doctor came closer. "Oh, no, no, no, no Green, I'm afraid you got it all wrong. You have seen nobody in this house so far, apart from me. And you know why? Because there is no one else in this house and there hasn't been anybody for years." Green straightened up. "Doctor don't be ridiculous, that's my parent's house…" "You haven't found any food" the Doctor pointed out, "you haven't found anything that would indicate that someone had been living here. And you know why? No one has entered this house. In years." His eyes were searching for her gaze. "Not even you."

Green stood up uneasily. "Doctor… what's this all about? You really have me worried…" She took a deep breath. "But what about the telly? Why was it still running?"  
The Doctor thought about it for a moment. "That sure will have a negative impact on the electricity bill."  
"Doctor you can't be serious!" Green shouted, "I mean… I m…  
The Doctor gave her a hug and stroked her back. Green pressed her face against his shoulder.

"You weren't scared of me, were you?" he asked, "You weren't wondering: "What's going on/what is he doing here/What does he want in my shower"?You didn't think that there was something wrong with me appearing in your house? Not just a tiny little bit?" Green held back her tears and sobbed while she shook her head.

"Then I've got bad news for you" he continued.  
"I'm not real."

Green stepped back and stared at him red eyed. "Stop it" she commanded, "Doctor, stop it!" "No Green, please, I'm trying to help you right now" the Doctor tried to calm her, "Green, nothing here is real." "But I hurt my hand when I hit the wall" Green mumbled confused. The Doctor grasped her wrists and Green hushed a pained "ouch" as soon as he touched her right hand. "Did it hurt?" he asked. Green shook her head. "No, sorry, you didn't hurt me. That was just preemptively." She looked at her wrist. Someone must have removed the bandage. She felt nothing. No pain. The hand was just numb but it didn't hurt and she could, to her surprise, perform normal movements.  
"But I felt a twinge" Green insisted, "I really felt it. It was real." "You're just as real as the house" the Doctor explained.

Green touched his hands absentmindedly. "Doctor, what is this all about? What is going on?"  
A hand of the Doctor disappeared inside his jacket but to Green's surprise he didn't reveal his screwdriver this time. There were glasses in his hand. He put them on.

"The fact, that you still don't realize what has happened proves that you're still part of your own imagination. If you remember correctly you haven't told me, and by me I mean of course not me but the real Doctor, anything about your past. In fact, you weren't even able to tell anything about it due to your memory loss. And yet all you could remember was that you had been alone; you were left by others, intentionally or not. It would be a fallacy to believe that you can all of a sudden and out of the blue with a jerk remember what your house looked like, or something as intimate as your own room. And, if I may say so: Those stuffed animals are no expression of refined taste." The Doctor had picked up a little turquoise bear shaped fluffy toy and eyed it up.  
"At least that's something you imagine the Doctor would have said if he had been here."  
"You are my imagination?" Green asked uncertainly. The Doctor nodded enthusiastically. "But you talk like him. You even look exactly like him." "I must congratulate you for your excellent imagination. Well, it would be rather odd if I actually congratulated you, you know, being part of your imagination and all."  
"And how should I know that you're not the real Doctor?" Green asked irritated.  
The Doctor remained silent for a moment. He thought carefully.

Then he leaned over and kissed her passionately.

Green freed herself from his grip and took a step backwards while gasping. The Doctor was panting and examined her doubtfully. Green closed her eyes. "Alright, I believe you. The Doctor would never have done this. Or otherwise I'll pay him back." She buried her face in her hands. "Good Lord, what's wrong with me? Even in my own imaginations I'm being harassed."

The Doctor cleared his throat.

Green looked him in the eye. "So?" she asked "What am I supposed to do now?" The Doctor looked around. "How should I know?" he replied, "I'm just your imagination!" "Yeah, but you seem to be far more intelligent. And you've got those glasses" Green pointed out and added in a lower voice: "Does he really use them to look intelligent?" The Doctor nodded. Green had to smile. "Doesn't work for me." She sat back on the bed. Pretty soft for something unreal, she thought.  
"Don't you have any clue?" she asked pleadingly "The Doctor always seems to know what to do. You're my imagination of him; therefore you HAVE to know what I'm supposed to do. You have to tell me!" The Doctor shook his head. "I'm afraid it doesn't work like that" he explained and sighed whilst rummaging through Green's belongings.

"I'm not real" Green tried to find methods of resolution similar to those the Doctor used, "but I can remember being real. I felt something beside blankness – I'll have to remember the moment my mind went black. I was in a narrow street and it was getting darker and darker… Yes, and I heard footsteps. No, not steps… but there was something behind me. I felt it."

The Doctor dug out a notebook, inspected it and, after having verified that it was still blank, pocketed it.

"You're not of much help" Green snuffled. "How can I be any help?" the Doctor asked, "you're the one who's real. All I can do is wait till it's over and I'm being restored in your subconsciousness." "Don't you have anything to say to me?" The Doctor gave her a blank stare and shrugged. Green sighed. "The Doctor would have said something. Even if it wasn't useful…" Green paused. The Doctor's comments were flashing through her mind and illuminating like little lightings that struck her brain (and probably damaged it as well). "And that's it" she mumbled and turned to the Doctor. "You said something… of course not you, the other you, the real you, but you said something, something about escaping. Yes, that was it, a possibility to get away from dangerous situations. You told me about what to do if there was no way out, that I should calm down and… and…" Green breathed in deeply. "There was something about breathing, too, I'm sure. Something about relaxing and reviving in a way…" The Doctor stared at her in surprise. "Blimey he really rubs off on you, doesn't he?"

Green laid down on her bed.  
"He said I should close my eyes" she mumbled as her lids became heavier "I guess it's worth a try."

At first Green tried to remember where she had been; where she had seen the Doctor the last time; what the alley, the last thing she could still recall, had looked like; but finally she had admit that it only led to getting totally tangled up in her own memory – and her memory dominated her imagination right now.  
What was it, she thought. What else was it? What did she do wrong?

She tried to think of nothing. Nothing at all.  
There was nothing in her head; there was nothing left inside her.  
Except for the pounding of her heart.  
Breathe in.  
There had to be something else. He definitely had said something else. She must have forgotten it.  
Breathe out.  
God, why couldn't she remember? What was it?  
Breathe in.

WHAT WAS IT?

Breathe out.  
Green was about to panic and lose her sanity. Or lose her sanity and panic because of that. Either way, she was going nuts like a starving squirrel and she knew it.  
But she held her breath.

A smile appeared on her lips. It was a wry smile and her psychiatrist probably wouldn't have approved it. But she smiled.  
She had found the way out.

Green took a deep breath.

Silence.  
She was regaining consciousness.

Green opened her eyes and gasped appalled, spitting out the thick mucus that had started to fill her lungs.


	5. Inhuman Nature

Green coughed and spitted.

With her eyelashes stuck together she was barely able to see anything.  
Panic-fuelled she gasped for air, still disgorging the strangely coloured mucus. Green tried to locate with her sense of touch her current position, groping around until she felt the thick walls of the tank she was currently in. With smudgy hands she tried to rub her eyes. She was able to stand although it was a bit complicated due to the slippery surface. Green coughed again slowly looking up. It was dark, rather dark and calm.  
Green touched the wall, searching for something to hold on to, lest she'd slip and tumble back into the goo.  
Her eyes had adjusted to the dark slowly and she reached out - the side of the tank was within reach. It would have taken a lot of time and effort but Green was sure that she would be able to escape her current confinement.

There it was again. The mumbling. The ductile movement that seemed to be audible only. She looked beyond the tank's edge. There were people.  
At least this was her first impression. Of course those weren't people. Probably people, but not people, like in "folks" or something. They were not human. And it dawned on her that this was ambiguous as well: they weren't humans. And they probably never heard of humanity.

Green observed them. They appeared to her to consist of nothing but air, grey foggy air. They moved as mist changed but somehow always remained the same shape. That was perhaps the only thing that seemed to be human about them: their silhouette.  
And they whispered.  
Green couldn't understand a single word, not even a sound sounded familiar. And yet she feared that she knew what they were talking about. Green crouched down but was careful not the slip away from the wall.

There was a long sigh in a corner of the room.  
"It's alright" she heard the soothing voice of the Doctor, "it's over."

Green remained silent and in her current position; she was baffled and afraid at the same time and found herself unable to move.  
There were footsteps, real footsteps this time. And the whisper.  
"She doesn't belong here" the Doctor cut through the mumbling, "And mark my words: she is not one of you! And she isn't going to become one, either!" There was a short silence until the Doctor went on: "But you could have been like her. And I mean all of you. You all could still be like her." Green straightened up carefully and looked beyond the edge. The Doctor stood in the middle of the room surrounded by those strange creatures. He seemed to understand them; and they seemed to listen.  
"There was a time when all of you looked like her" he explained, "your folk, your people, your ancestors were like her: Humans." In a lower voice he added: "Proper humans."

This had probably caused a dispute – some of the creatures were getting closer, tried to lunge at him or simply diffused. "Oh, you can't call yourself proper humans, can you?" the Doctor declared despiteous "The human is a unity of body and soul. With one of those missing you're just incomplete. You're nothing more than the lost spirit of the long-gone humans." The Doctor started walking again: "And even you seem to have lost your spirits. You have forgotten your purpose; the very core of your existence; you can't even remember what it was like being a human being." Carefully he tried to touch a foggy figure. "It's the "being" you're lacking. You are not... No, you are no more, because you can't be. You've stopped existing properly a long time ago." The blurry creature seemed to look him up and reached out for his hand as well. "You can't deny that, can you?"  
Then he listened. Green had to get up on her tiptoes to watch him from a distance.

The Doctor's face showed nothing but embitterment and cold-heartedness. His stare was cold, his gaze was empty. He listened carefully without ever changing his expression.

Eventually he trotted to the tank and reached down. Green gave him a frightened stare and remained motionless. Her eyes couldn't hide how scared she was right now and yet... they were full of vitality; full of natural warmth and innocent vividness. They were real and no matter how many tears came to her eyes, and how unsightly her face was, still covered in that goo: she was human.  
With all her inelegance and blemishes she was still something the creatures couldn't become again.

The unsophistication of her being slowly melted away the coldness of the Time Lord's heart.

"Come on, Green" the Doctor knelt down and reached out for Green's hand, "Don't be scared. It's over." Green nodded uncertainly. The Doctor grasped her hands tightly and pulled, helping her to crawl out of the tank. Green knelt on the floor and shivered.

"Breathe in deeply" the Doctor patted her back carefully, avoiding getting his hands too dirty. Again he faced one of the foggy creatures, though he seemed to be still talking to her.  
"I bet you think it's air you're breathing in…" he continued, "but actually it isn't." Confused as she was right now Green held her breath for a moment. "Don't worry, it won't harm you" the Doctor stroked her back again, "it's not that it isn't air. It's not simply air, as you may think. But I guess I owe you an explanation first." His hand closed softly around hers. "Green, may I introduce you to your future?" The Doctor's face was as cold as ice again. "The human race. Or, whatever was left of it."  
Green stood there in the dark and silent room, nothing but distant red lights and strangely materialized figures, consisting of nothing but microscopic particles which floated gently in the air.  
"They're out of shape. Literally. They don't have a body anymore. A real body." Expectantly he stared at the ceiling and seemed to have found what he was looking for instantly. "That's where this constant humming noise is coming from: The air ventilation. Not that it's air like in the atmosphere of this planet, or naturally, like you can find it outside of this city under the gleaming sun." He got his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and activated it. "You see, Green, the air is a specific mixture, consisting of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide and probably bits of hydrogen and carbon monoxide as well. You know, consisting of all those components you'd summarize it unscholarly as "air". But this air is special. It's an individually generated and finely balanced mixture of particular interested for those creatures." He switched the screwdriver off.  
"It's the only reason why they still exist."

Green looked around, her eyes concentrating on examining the invisible people.

"It holds them together" the Doctor sighed, "You can imagine this air as some kind of glue; thin, gaseous but pretty adhesive. It's spreading through the ventilation shafts, supplying the self called "human beings" with their essential special air constantly." Green got to her feet again and propped herself against a metal wall. The Doctor moved towards some levers, buttons and fuses that were placed on the wall. "Oh, you've got high standards in electrical engineering, really. Equipped with the latest in electronics. Probably even a bit ahead of your time…" He examined a big fuse and used his sonic screwdriver on it. He looked at it, then at the fuse again and shrugged. "Probably works as well this way…" he mumbled and turned around, the sonic screwdriver still in his hand.  
"And you all know what will happen if the power goes off?" The figures backed away from him, as he activated the screwdriver again. "You will die" he continued in a lower voice, "all of you. If there's a total blackout your lights go out. Literally. You're falling apart to grey dust, getting torn into pieces or simply decompose."

There was a whisper in Green's ear. At first it seemed to be nothing more but a distant, unintelligible and deep moan. But the closer it came the more audible it became.

"And that's why we need her."

Green moved closer to the Doctor and tried to hide behind his back. Without turning his head he mumbled: "Don't be scared. They won't hurt you. I promise."  
"Doctor, we need your help."  
The Doctor's eyes narrowed. "How dare you say that?" he shouted, "How dare you? How can you insist on killing a human being when you call yourself human as well? Look at her." He grabbed Green by the shoulder and gently pushed her forward; she turned her head and yet felt that he kept an arm wrapped around her chest.  
"It's a human being; it's a SHE; she has a name, like each one of you; she is just like you."  
"Were" added a thinner voice, "She is like we used to be."  
"And what, precisely, is your plan?" the Doctor asked, controlling his anger.  
There was silence for a moment.  
"We need her" it was the deep dull voice again, "She is our last hope."

The Doctor took a step backwards and closer to Green.  
"I'm sure glad they didn't ask for your name" the Doctor said, trying to lighten her mood, "They probably would have thought it to be some kind of prevision."  
"What's provisional about Green?" she whispered without taking her eyes off those creatures.  
"I meant your last name. Hope." The Doctor hissed.

He turned his head to her. His smile seemed tense. Green felt that he was, by cheering her up, attempting to suppress his rage as well.

"Doctor, we need your help. We need HER."

The sigh in Green's ear was neither male nor female. It didn't even sound human. It was just a voice; an ordinary voice, nothing more.  
An unimaginative accounting clerk, whose imaginativeness wasn't sufficient to produce something more exciting than a blank sheet of paper when he tried to think of something creative, probably would have described this voice as unimpressive. And he would have been right about that.

The voice had no heart. It had no soul. It was really just a voice. The Doctor was probably right this time: You couldn't have a soul without a body and vice versa.

"You need her, eh? What for?" the Doctor asked.  
"We want to be like her again. We need our bodies back. She is our key."  
"Your key to what?" the Doctor snapped, "To the world outside? Is this what you want? To be back in the light again, in the sun, to repopulate the world you've abandoned?"  
"There are other human beings" a light voice explained, "There is another planet earth. We need her as means of transport."  
"You want to kill her to travel along in her body" the Doctor corrected. Green swallowed and snuggled against the Doctor, who brushed her clotted hair behind her ear.  
"A sacrifice has to be maid" there was a strangled whisper behind them, "for the greater good."  
"For the greater good" the Doctor repeated mockingly. "And if you make this sacrifice, what then? How many of you could travel anyway?"  
"At least fifteen" replied a distant voice, "but probably even more if we close ranks. There is more space than you'd have expected in a human vessel."

The Doctor bristled with anger. "Alright, suppose you could detach her body from her soul and use her as means of transport. You'd travel back to the earth, or any other earth, and then? What are you expecting to find there?"  
"There will be other people..." a voice managed to whisper but then hushed.  
Silence crept out of the corners of the room again, changing the peculiar air's consistency into something thicker, something harder to breathe in. The constant buzzing of the mechanical ventilation seemed louder than before. Green swallowed a few times. The air left an acrid aftertaste in her mouth.

"You'd need to kill other people" the Doctor conceived and thought out aloud, "That's all you want. Your mind implanted in different bodies. In REAL bodies."

"What's so special about it?" there was a deep moan again. It was the voice of an old man, Green assumed, heavily breathing and with cracking sounds in it. She couldn't locate the origin of it; there wasn't a greyish figure that looked any different. In fact none of them looked like anything at all.  
The voice went on in a soothing tone.  
"Humans kill each other all the time. People kill themselves out of ulterior motives. In actual fact, they kill each other without any reason at all." Green breathed out distressed. She was too nervous to even breathe normally. Her lungs didn't obey her anymore. She seemed to lose control over her body.  
"At least" the creature went on, wherever it was right now "We have reasons, good reasons: we want to survive."

The Doctor locked the creatures on to his gaze, one by one. His eyes were cold as ice and somehow mourning over something. But he tried to keep a straight face.

"You can't go anywhere" the Doctor concluded, "None of you can go. You're forced to stay here. And like every human being you're bound to die."  
His words cut through the monotonous noise from above.  
"And I'm sorry" he stated with a cold undertone in his voice, "I'm so sorry, but I can't help you. All humans rely on factors they have no influence on. All of them are completely and utterly at natural disasters' mercy. And so are you."  
The Doctor put both arms around Green and supported her while walking. The creatures made way for him. The distant moaning had stopped.

"You know" the Doctor sighed as he reached the door that lead to a long corridor and ended in a small alley behind this giant laboratory, "I always feel obliged to give the enemies I meet a choice. I offer them my help in return for not hurting innocents. Otherwise they'll have to pay the highest price for their deeds. But with you it's different... you leave me no choice but to abandon you to your fate." After leaving the room he added in a low voice: "And your technology."

Green had closed her eyes and opened them again as she felt the cold night air again on her clammy forehead. They were back in the open air. "It's night" Green mumbled absentmindedly and stopped for a moment. The Doctor let go of her. Green sank to her knees, touched the ground with her hands and breathed in deeply. The Doctor stretched.

"I'm glad you came in time" Green mumbled but had to correct herself "I've got to be eternally grateful to you for saving my life. Again."

"Well, this time it wasn't entirely your fault" the Doctor sighed and reached out for her hand. She placed it on his but released her grip shortly afterwards. "What do you mean by that?" she asked upset, "you were unstoppable and didn't care that I couldn't run as fast as you. Besides, the running was completely useless. We didn't have to find those creatures – they had found us." "You need to learn a lot" the Doctor mumbled. "Like what?" Green asked, "I sure know one thing: I shouldn't have tried to find you. I should have returned to the Tardis and stayed there until you came back. Or didn't. I don't care."  
The expression of the Doctor's face was grave and solemn. "I'm sorry if I hurt you by saying anything. Anything at all. Especially anything about it being your own fault. I didn't mean to. And it wasn't." Carefully he added: "Alright?"

Green stood up by herself. She was tired and felt disgusting. But she wasn't mad.

Green nodded and trotted slowly behind him. She couldn't think of anything to say to him right now. She had to get her thoughts in order first and her mind back to working normally.

"It's a strange feeling not knowing where you come from" Green mumbled later on, "and I'm sorry that I called for your help in the first time. And I can't tell you how I ended up there."  
"You don't have to apologize to me, I told you before" the Doctor put one arm around her, "You did nothing wrong." "I guess that's the nicest thing you'll ever say to me" she sighed. "Nothing wrong with that" he countered.  
A deafening thunder growled over them and swallowed the last syllable of the Doctor's sentence. The sky had been too dark – they hadn't been able to notice the thunderstorm earlier. Although, right now mother nature offered hints generously. Lightning struck through the gloomy clouds. And it started to rain.  
The Doctor started to run again, pulling along Green, who moved nearly as quickly as him.  
"It's no problem keeping up with me now, is it?" he shouted against the rising wind.  
Green let herself get carried away to yelling: "Shut up and run!"  
Both of them reached the Tardis completely wet but fairly safe.

For Green it wasn't so bad after all. She looked at herself in the reflection of a bowl, or whatever it was, and sighed. The mucus had washed off.  
More or less.  
"That's better!" the Doctor sighed after closing the door of the Tardis. "You should always go and look for a safe place when there's a lightning approaching." He gave Green a thoughtful look. "We all know what horrible misfortune can be caused by a thunderstorm. I mean, besides being struck by a lightning and smelling the stench of your own burning flesh."  
"A power blackout" Green mumbled without giving it much thought. "Not in the Tardis" the Doctor wanted to appease her, but the gentle smile on his lips vanished as he recalled the catastrophy that was bound to happen.

He had known it. He had known that a whole species became extinct in one night. But he had never known how this was even possible.  
Until now.

Electricity as rise and fall of the human nature.

He sighed. And Green cursed herself for being non-sensitive. She didn't know what exactly she had provoked by mentioning it, but she could nearly feel the grief rising in him. It was all in his eyes, the mirrors of his soul. All in his beautiful and expressive eyes.  
Green didn't dare to ask the Doctor what he felt, although she wasn't sure what a Time Lord could except for feeling sorry for all those who weren't Time Lords. By no means was he arrogant or narcissistic. But perhaps a small sprinkling of personal confirmation and a dash of overestimation of his own capabilities did the trick.

Green looked around and spotted a small settee located behind the Doctor, who stood by the centre of the Tardis and probably tried to find out which button triggered which rotation and movement of the Tardis.  
Carefully she sneaked past behind him and sat down on the settee, bending her knees and huddling up. She didn't want to be in his way, figuratively as well as literally. Strangely enough he had been silent since she had mentioned the blackout. She thought it best not to disturb him.

But she watched him carefully, followed every movement and observed his expression, stony-faced and hard hearted as it was right now.

And she had to wonder if he had still felt sorry for those creatures if they had managed to kill her.


	6. Where did I go wrong?

**Author's note**: Please excuse the titles of the chapters. That's not really my forte. I prefer _piano forte_.  
God, I'm stupid.

* * *

"Just a little bit to the right and...No, no, that's not working..."

There was a bonking noise as if someone had smashed his foot against something solid and metal and would regret it soon.

Green opened her eyes pushing away the covers she had pulled over her head. She realized soon that it was no blanket that had covered her – it was the Doctor's coat.  
She sat up slowly and rubbed her eyes. The lights in the Tardis were of strange colours. And most of all: they were bright. Green yawned. It was strange. In a room that deprived her from sunlight she found herself losing her sense of time easily. Green wondered how the Doctor kept his circadian rhythm working against all natural laws.

"And this goes over here and that... well, it doesn't look so bad here, could be worse and this... has probably never worked before, suits me..."

Green turned her head, her hands still fumbling around with the Doctor's coat.

"And when this... No, no, no, what is it with you? What's the matter?"

The fabric in her hand felt...odd. She ran her fingers over the unspectacular cloth. Somehow she had expected it to be...special? Or more special? It was an ordinary coat with all the advantages and disadvantages of an average garment.  
But Green had to admit she felt a bit flattered. The Doctor had wrapped his coat around her while she had been asleep. And it had been pretty comfortable because the Tardis, regardless of its current position, seemed to be rather cold inside.

"So, if this one points in that direction and all the others seem to aim at- morning Green did you sleep well?-nothing in particular it's probably like, yes, this could be, alright, well then that's that."

The Doctor devoted as much attention to her as a botanist would towards an ordinary plant which is dying with thirst, while carefully pruning back the small branches of an excitingly exotic bonsai.

"I guess so" she yawned again and stretched.  
"I must admit, you had me a bit worried" the Doctor explained, "Soon after we'd taken off you're just gone. Disappeared in the debts of the Tardis. I assumed you found yourself a nice place somewhere to have a rest. But you could have told me."  
Green sighed and put the coat beside her.  
So much for the caring about other people.

"I'm sorry" she apologized grumpy, "someone must have put his cloak over me." "I did not... and you... all the time..." he was having trouble finding the right words. Green got the feeling that the contact between the Doctor's mind and mouth had been interrupted, which would have been a realistic explanation why he sounded right now like a phone with minimal connectivity.  
And the Doctor did the magical trick you do with all malfunctioning cell phones: open, remove batteries, put them back in and start again.  
At least it looked as if the Doctor would have shut down his brain and was currently rebooting.

Green sighed and looked around. She hoped that he'd be approachable in a moment or two. And if not it wasn't so bad either. At least he was silent.  
The coat rack at the door of the Tardis caught her attention. Having nothing better to do she hung up the coat.  
The strange little device, fondly called sonic screwdriver by the Doctor, fell out of one of the pockets. Green looked at the Doctor, who was still struggling to adjust his mind in the right position by turning his head, and then carefully picked it up.

The name itself was strange enough. Green had no idea what it was supposed to mean. It didn't look like a screwdriver at all and it only made disturbing noises. She accidently activated it and let it drop on the floor instantly. She hated that sound. It scared her. It hurt.

Green picked the "thing" up again. She thought the name "sonic screwdriver" to be some kind of a cheap joke that probably only Time Lords would get. Too bad he was alone here.  
She turned to the Doctor who had readjusted his neck. His cervical vertebras were cracking.

"What does it actually do?" Green asked. "What it does?" he repeated, "It's a sonic device. Like I said it's called sonic screwdriver." "But what do you do with a sonic screwdriver?" Green asked irritated, "Go looking for sonic screws?" The Doctor chuckled. "You've got some imagination, don't you?" he breathed out relaxed. "No, it's not like that actually. It's multifunctional, really. It can pick locks, provide me with information concerning the objects I'm scanning with it, then there's the scanning, like I just mentioned, it works on nearly every material." He pulled it out of his jacket, very amused. "Apart from that it makes a pleasing sound every time I active it."  
He pressed the little button on the front and Green covered her ears, looking away in pain.

"What?" the Doctor asked disappointed, "Don't you like it?"  
"It just hurts" Green replied, "I don't know what it is, but it hurts." The Doctor looked carefully at his sonic screwdriver, shook it looked at it again and finally shrugged.

"Too bad" he sighed under his breath, "but I'm afraid I'll have to use it nonetheless."  
"What for?" Green bursted out. "Well, for example the sonic screwdriver helped me to distract the Slipnears and for this reason and this reason only I was able to recover you nearly unharmed." "And how did you do that?" Green went on. "Like I said, it's multifunctional. It's a bit complicated, but I'll let you know this: I moved a stone forward in time. It was still there on the same place afterwards. Alright, it wasn't in the same place, it had started rolling. But that was it."  
The Doctor fascinated Green. She couldn't imagine how a human being was able to talk such nonsense and still keep a straight face.  
Alright, he wasn't actually a human being, but probably pretty close.

"You moved time forward" she repeated unbelieving, "Well, yes, well, sort of...well, just the stone, well..." "All this with one device?" Green asked unbelievingly. The Doctor gave her a nod but added: "You don't get your head around it, do you?"  
"I hope you won't actually try it" Green replied aghast. The Doctor sighed.  
Oh, the human race. So clever. And yet so unidimensional. But he encouraged himself that he should probably cut back on the wittiness. He had heard such bad rumours lately about humans being unable to cope with ingenious remarks and their heads exploding as a result of some kind of stress reaction to it. And he figured it would have been mean to check it for authenticity.

"Doctor, I have one last question" Green continued. The Doctor nodded lost in his thoughts. Something seemed to distract him. Really tried to distract him. But what was it? And what for?

"Have you ever tightened a screw with it?" Green asked, bringing him back to reality. The Doctor looked puzzled, let his gaze wander, found back to Green and thought about it again for some time. Then he shook his head, as if he wanted to get rid of a vicious little creature that tried to snuggle up to his neck. Then he stopped. "What?"

Green sat down on the floor again; somehow it was more comfortable than the settee. Besides, her legs seemed to be still tired. Or already tired. She couldn't tell the difference but found it hard to believe, since she had only awoken like...

The Doctor ran his fingers over some parts of the centre of the Tardis.

"Oh, please, come on" he whispered, "please, please please..."

He must have felt Green's astonished stare at his neck. Before he had found time to explain it, Green had already asked: "What's going on?"  
"It's the Tardis. Just some minor complications with the... well, it's gonna take some time till we'll be back on the ground. Or some ground." Green cocked an eyebrow. The Doctor sighed: "Look: We're trapped." "Trapped? What's that supposed to mean?" "We've been flying in a direction slightly different from the course I wanted to take. We're in a deadlock. It may take the Tardis a while to get out of it again."  
"But isn't there something like... you know, go into reverse, drive backwards and turn around as soon as possible?" The Doctor shook his head. "No, it's not like that at all. The Tardis finds her way out all by herself. She just needs time."

"She?" Green formed the words with her lips but didn't dare to say them aloud.  
"So, in the meantime we'll better..." Green yawned and therefore didn't catch his last words. But she guessed it would have been impolite of her to ask him to repeat it for her. And on the other hand: she didn't understand what he was talking about most of the time, either.

Green rubbed her eyes again and tried to keep them open. She was a bit sleepy. And it was getting worse. It seemed as if the drowsiness gained the upper hand again; she felt as if her body had been squished, her remains then being pressed into a human mould and then getting squished again; and the only letters she could think of right now wher and they didn't even make sense anymore.

Green buried her face in her palms. Her eyes ached and burned and Green dreaded the idea that they had already plans, containing how to pop out of their eye sockets and where to go next.  
"Do you mind?" Green mumbled half asleep and leaned against the noise centre of the Tardis.  
"Do I mind what?" the Doctor asked before looking at her.  
"Well, no wonder you're tired" the Doctor sighed, "you've already been up more than a day."  
"I recently woke up, don't you remember?" Green stated in her sleep.

"Yes, but no. You see, Green, like I said before we're in a dead end of space. Even the time gets caught up in here, having trouble with turning around itself, because that wouldn't make any sense. Of course you're familiar with the phrase "As time moves forward". The thing is: Time just can't go backwards. It just can't happen. And, tell you what: Time hates corners. Edges are alright for it due to the possibility of going above it. But if time ends up in a corner it can't do anything apart from heading forwards until it moves into the right direction again. And so time has to take it's time" in a lower voice he added "didn't sound as good as expected" and finally he concluded: "So, in case you hadn't noticed: you've been up more than 28 hours. And even now, while you're dozing off you're actually sleeping more than you think you do. Every sentence nearly takes half an hour, because time moves faster but you notice slower, which means..." The Doctor stopped for calculations, "Yes, you should be up any minute by now. I must have talked for nearly half a day." He sighed, slowly trotted over to the settee and sat down.  
"Talking for hours...I must be getting old."

The Tardis moved forward again after it had been backwards and sideways and both of it at the same time. It had followed a stream of time, which seemed still a bit dizzy but was finally moving onwards again; it seemed happy about it itself and therefore had been running very smoothly for quite a time now.

The Doctor leaned back, stroking a wall of the Tardis with the back of his hand fondly. "I can always rely on you, I know."

"You're talking to the box?" Green asked and stretched. She stifled a yawn or two.  
"I supposed you think it's weird, isn't it?" the Doctor snapped, pulling his hand back. "No, that's not..." Green countered half-yawning and tried to get her messy hair back into the right place.  
"Why did you call it a"She"?" she asked.  
"Because the Tardis is female" the Doctor hissed.

"How can you tell?"

The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair. He could have explained it to her. He could have shouted at her. He could have said something that would have caused nothing but confusion and then he could have had the satisfaction that she hadn't realized what nonsense he had talked. He could have ignored her.  
To his own surprise he did nothing. Just nothing. There had to be something about her that tended to placate him. He felt softened like a biscuit that someone had forgotten in his tea.

Green didn't even expect an answer. She assumed that she wouldn't even have understood it. But that was alright for her. The Doctor had such a curious way of talking. She had to admit he seemed a bit dotty. But in a nice way.

"Did you have a good rest?" the Doctor asked and was surprised at himself for being in the mood for small talk.

"I guess so..." Green nodded. "And thank you" she added graver. "What for?" the Doctor asked. "For staying awake and letting me have a good rest. I guess you must be really tired. Standing beside someone who keeps dozing off all the time... I mean, I wouldn't have blamed you if you had given me a proper kick in the ribs from time to time...I definitely would have done it if I were you."  
"Oh, don't worry about me" the Doctor reassured her, "I'm fine. It's alright."  
"But Doctor, when was the last time you slept?" Green asked irritated.  
"I can't remember" he explained while looking at a monitor and scanning it with the sonic screwdriver.  
Green looked puzzled, most likely like a jigsaw puzzle that had just been pieced together but was about to collapse into pieces again.  
"I don't sleep" the Doctor asserted, "I don't need to."  
"You were awake the whole time?" Green asked uncertainly. The Doctor nodded. "Even when I was sound asleep?" "I s'ppose so" the Doctor sighed.

"That's creepy" Green concluded.

There it was again. The Doctor could have reproved her _(although he had nothing to prove or any evidence, ha ha),_ he could have shouted at her, he SHOULD have shouted at her and put her into her place, wherever that would have been but, very probably, in the Tardis as well.  
But again he did nothing. And again it got him really worried. Why was he so...decent?

"I s'ppose it is" he nodded and went on with his work. Green removed the bandage and touched the injured wrist. "Leave it be" the Doctor mumbled without even looking at her, "It needs time. We all do." He sighed.

"Doctor, you said something about being able to move the time forward, didn't you?" Green asked.  
"No... I mean, not really... I mean... I can travel in time if that's what you're referring to" he stuttered.  
"So, if we were on a planet" Green went on, "wouldn't it be possible for you to let me step out of the Tardis and pick me up in a few months, when my wrist is healed?"  
The Doctor stared at her confused and didn't know if he should shake his head or if there was any other way of conveying disapproval.  
"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid, that wouldn't work" he finally clarified. "What would you do during the time?" "What do I do right now?" she responded without giving it much thought. The Doctor had to admit that he wasn't used to a companion armed with powerful responses.

"Anyway, that's not how it works" he explained, "You can't travel on your own time line."  
That usually did it. Not that anyone actually knew what it meant.  
But it sure was some kind of magical phrase that everyone treated with respect.  
Green nodded. It was a sure relief for the Doctor that it had worked this time as well.

"Doctor?" Green looked around.  
Her mind had been wandering and she had just found herself, still in the Tardis. But the Doctor wasn't in sight.  
She stood up.  
"Doctor?"  
"Down here" was his reply from under the floor.  
Green knelt and could see him working with his sonic screwdriver. She tried to hum a song she could still remember _(although it appeared to her that the amnesia had removed all the good songs from her mind, the one you liked when you were a kid and you still found acceptable when you were an adult, but not because of the music: it was the thoughts you had attached to it. Or the romantic moments. Or the thoughts about the romantic moments you never had and probably never would. But enough about the sad little life the poor author leads. Carry on!)_, just to keep her sight from bubbling up and down and her ears from buzzing and all the other things the sonic screwdriver caused.

"Doctor, I have a question" Green began earnest.  
"Again?" she heard him yell disbelievingly from underneath.  
"And I don't want you to be mad at me" she went on, "But I... I want to..."  
The Doctor's head popped up beside her knees where a metal base plate had been 'til now.  
"What is it?"  
Green swallowed. "Who were those people? On the planet. You called them humans. Were those humans? Is this what is going to become of the humans?" she asked nervously.  
"Yes, in a way" he sighed staring into space. _(Still figuratively.)_  
"You said something about them being my future. Is this what I'm going to become?" she asked and added a bit more uncertain. "The mucus I was covered in. Did it have anything to do with it? Is it going to change me? Is it invading my body or something like that?"

The Doctor shook his head and tried to calm her nerves. "No, no, no, that was just mucus. Any kind of mucus, nothing special, really. And you're not going to become one of them. They changed themselves; they didn't want to perform some kind of adjustment if that's what you meant. No, they were simply trying to drown you. I don't know why they tried it with the mucus, but that's probably a matter of preservation. And yes, they were humans, but just a tiny special kind of humans. Nothing more than a branch of the tree of life that was bound to wither." The Doctor couldn't fail to notice that Green hadn't quite understood the end of his demonstration.

"You see, Green" the Doctor went on in order to make it comprehensible to her, "I'm sure you've heard before of some kind of tree of life, maybe something about, don't know, a place of eternal piece and vigour or something similar. Let me tell you one thing: The tree of life is real, it exists.  
But it's not a mental status, or some kind of higher power you'll have to anticipate. No, it's really a tree. Probably looks like an ordinary tree either. And it's called tree of life because it's deeply rooted on some kind of power source, you could call it concentrated energy or just: Life. Every life form originates from there. Every kind of life, no matter how small or big it is.  
And this tree has innumerable branches. It's easier to imagine that there's one main branch for every planet. It doesn't work like this, but that's not the point. And the tree is growing, it had been growing for million billion years and still it grows, it never stops. Every branch represents a species. And there are branches emerging all the time as well as withering. What goes around comes around... and then it goes around for a little while again.  
Every species has its time. Like it or not: we all have to die one day. Every species will become extinct. It doesn't matter if it's a mass extinction or if there's just one specimen left and therefore it's gonna become extinct. We all die. You die, I die, whether we like it or not."  
The Doctor sighed. Green nodded. She seemed pale.

"So those creatures that captured me... died" Green concluded. The Doctor nodded, his gaze drifting into something more melancholic and not-from-this-world again.  
"I wouldn't blame you" the Doctor sighed, "You can't expect from every human being to sacrifice them to become a vessel for human souls. Their extinction had been determined."  
"You're implying that they died because of me..." she mumbled a bit uneasy. "No, no, no, no, I was just...I didn't mean to imply anything. Those creatures died, like I said before every creature has to die one day, somehow and somewhere. And if there are more of them dying" he snapped his fingers "And "boom" there it is: extinction! Gone forever and never to be seen again. Look Green, that'd just part of life. That's nothing to feel sorry about. You couldn't have done anything for them." Green nodded. She knew that the Doctor had only mentioned her name as a pretext. Mostly he was talking to himself and trying to convince himself that there had been no other solution.

"And besides" the Doctor continued in a more gratifying tone "their plan for escaping was absurd, it never would have worked anyway. If you hadn't awakened soon enough you would have been dead as well and they had died anyway."

"I've heard strange sounds before we walked towards the city" Green claimed, "There was distant whisper and voices all over the place. But I couldn't understand them. They were too... thin. Were those..."  
"The remains of those who were unfortunate and tried to get back into nature" the Doctor completed, "Yeah, they got ripped into pieces and blown away with the wind, scattered across the whole planet, never to be reassembled again. I mean, even the humans in the city only lived in their minds anymore. But they had pretty strong minds, well, that's the human nature, and could still convince themselves that they were still alive. And the mind of those out there, the torn-up ones, were strong as well, despite the fact that there had been nothing left of them but some molecules they still were able to communicate with you, you could still hear what had been their voices once. Uncomfortable thought, isn't it? Getting ripped into pieces and forced to swirl around in the atmosphere, without any body, without any soul, without knowing about your own existence...doomed to live forever."

Green got more and more uncomfortable with the Doctor talking about death. She knew that you never should stay in the same vehicle with someone who keeps mumbling about death and demise and decease and all the other bad things with d, although she couldn't think of anymore.  
Alright, probably doomsday. And darling, as well.  
You should never let someone drive when he's grieving...

"How did that happen?" Green asked carefully, "How did they end up without a body?" The Doctor's gaze stayed fixed; he was looking at nothing in particular. "They just didn't want to have one anymore" he explained and sighed.  
"What do you mean by that?" Green didn't quite understand it. "They killed themselves?" "In a way, maybe..." the Doctor mumbled but shook his head, bringing his eyes back into reality again. "No, no, they didn't like their bodies; that's all. It's as simple as that."

"How did that happen?" Green repeated her question, "I mean you can't just snap your fingers, or click your heals or close your eyes and turn around and say something like "there's no place like rome" and "POOF" - there's nothing left of you but your mind!"

What a curios manner of speaking, the Doctor thought amazed.

"Well, it was probably some kind of pandemic, well more like an epidemic actually, well, had to be some kind of trend, I suppose. There were centuries when they wanted to be thin or skinny or even look like skeletons; on the other hand they wanted to look young or mature, or light-skinned or dark-skinned and finally they didn't want to be skinned at all. That's trend and that's life. And if they want to change something they'll do everything within their power to achieve the change they want. You know, that's just the way it is with humans."

"What about the humans?" she asked bewilderedly.  
"Like, you know… that's just how humans exist. That's why they're humans. It's all part of their existence, their being, whatever you want to call it. It's what makes them humans. And they pass it on from generation to generation" the Doctor concluded with a lowered voice:  
"Somehow."  
"What do you mean by that?" Green asked shyly.

The Doctor walked passed her a few times, searching for the right answer and breathing down her neck. Eventually he gave in.  
"You know what I'm talking about. And as you can see it's just as embarrassing for me as it is for you. Look, I don't know how I brought this up and I don't even care about it. I don't know anything about those…specific things specific to certain species…"  
Green gave him a worried look and shrugged.  
"Oh great, I didn't want it to move in this direction but I don't know how to stop it now.  
You see, Green, those are things I don't want to discuss. Those are things I don't know a thing about. And I don't even want to." The Doctor got more and more uneasy every moment. But Green didn't know what to do and wanted to do the right thing. And, of course, that couldn't work out well.  
"I…mh…" Green swallowed the dry knot in her throat and was surprised that it seemed to leave an awful aftertaste. "Don't you KNOW anything about the human…reproduction?"

"Pure terror" seemed to be written on the Doctor's face, in bright flashing colors.  
"I… I'm… I don't! I don't know. No, I don't know!" He repeated it over and over again while nervously pulling on levers and pressing buttons absent minded. They ought to have no effect at all and the Doctor ignored the fact that the Tardis seemed now bouncier than before.

"But you're the Doctor" she repeated bashfully, "I' mean you know…" the word "everything" remained a mere whisper, unspoken and yet known to be the truth.  
"I know, I know", he said unnecessary loud. "And I know that I don't know. And I don't know because I don't want to know. Of course I could know, but I don't know and I know that I won't." The silence, that filled the room now, had squeezed in and tried to stop the Doctor from starting again on what he knew, or not. But finally it had to admit defeat.  
"I mean… I just don't want to know! You know… no, you don't know, because you don't know what you don't know but I know that I don't know and I know why I don't want to know and that seems perfectly alright." He ran his fingers through his hair and groaned, his fixed eyes had focused on the little girl standing in front of him. With a soft voice but a glare strong enough to bisect her head and leave unaesthetic stains and traces on the interior of the Tardis he said: "Understand?"  
She nodded.  
And she remained silent.

Hours had passed, although the poor girl hadn't noticed. Probably even days. But she wouldn't have noticed that as well. And it wasn't even the Doctor's fault. It all needed time…  
Green sighed.  
… even the sheer word seemed to lose its meaning inside of the Tardis. There was nothing…timely. No, nothing connected with time at all. And although the Doctor had just aimed the timing light directly at her (_timing… because he's a Time Lord, haha;_ _the author leans back in his chair and laughs maniacal at his own lack of wit_) she wasn't… well, she didn't even know how she felt. Or what seemed to be the problem just now.

Somehow the Doctor had managed to make her feel insecure. She didn't know why or how. But she was getting uncomfortable.  
It had nothing to do with her travelling in space with a complete stranger while she was still suffering from amnesia. That wasn't the point. In some way he upset her, frightened her or irritated her. And yet it felt as if she didn't even knew the meaning of those words. She felt just…bwleaaah…

The worst feeling is the absence of emotions and senses. On the other hand it's a hardly a feeling at all. You feel that you feel nothing at all. You just stand there and wonder what's wrong with you because you know that there must be something wrong merely because you don't feel that something is wrong, or what you did wrong. And at the same time you don't realize what stupid things you do because you worry about the things that seem to be missing, instead of the real issues. Like denying the true trouble spot. Or burning your cake absent mindedly.  
But Green was in the process of coming to terms with the present. The past didn't worry her that much. The past's past and bygone were gone by and whatsoever. No, the past was easy. At least you were able to see what silly things you did; how hastily you've acted; what dumb things you had said; in a blur you remembered the names of the drinks that had sounded hilarious that night you drank too much of them, and in the morning you learned that the name "Screwdriver" was given that drink for one reason only, because it screwed you up… And you could watch it all go past in your mind and remind yourself how stupid you WERE. But that was the point. It revealed how you WERE. You weren't like it anymore, not at all. In the presence you have not enough time to worry about the things you'll do and regret without knowing it at first, no, not even in the Tardis.  
And finally she pulled herself together, tried not to worry about her empty feelings inside anymore and swore by herself never to let her get hurt by the harsh temper of the Doctor again.

She had known about his bad behavior from the start; he never deceived her about it. And yet she felt so hollow she wanted to cry about it and keep on crying without ever knowing why.  
And her self-esteem seemed so low that it wasn't even sure what its name meant and what it could have done about that.

The Doctor felt worse because he knew what he had done wrong. But for the first time he didn't know what could have been. There were no other possibilities; there had been no other possibilities.

The trousers of time had been closed because they went to the dry cleaner's early this morning.

The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair. He didn't understand it.  
It seemed that, concerning this matter, actions weren't free but…predetermined. No. They had to be predetermined. The conversation with Green, as well as the end of it, had been predestinated. So…what else could he have done?  
He sighed under his breath. He could have said "No", just "no" and nothing else. And she probably even would have understood it without him shouting the same things over and over again.  
Probably.

"No, no, no…" he kept on mumbling, hoping the words could find their way back into the past, when he had needed them, while rewinding the same situation over and over in his mind. Never ever before in his entire life (and those were a lot of hundred years by now) he had felt so… insecure. How could he not be sure? How could there be another solution? And then there was it, sneaking up behind him and giving him a gentle tip on the shoulder, the worst questions of them all: Where did he go wrong?  
What was happening to him? How could he feel so uncertain? All because of this girl?  
The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair whereas he tried to find a satisfactory answer to his questions. Of course, he probably would have been surprised if it actually had fallen out of his hair.  
He closed his eyes and swallowed hard.  
A satisfactory answer didn't have to be satisfying, did it?

"So", was the first word the Doctor poured out like the long awaited first drop of hot tea out of a boiling tea kettle, after you've waited for what felt like an eternity for the kettle to make any sound at all. And, just like it's always with the sound of the tea, Green winced at the abrupt remark of the Doctor. But to her surprise he hadn't planned to continue it.  
After she had watched him a while staring at his computer programs, pulling levers, touching parts of the Tardis in a strange way and giving her a nasty look as soon as he had realized that she was watching him, she asked uncertain: "So what?"

"So, whatever it is right now, I don't understand it", said the Doctor and turned his face to her slowly.  
Green breathed out heavily and folded her arms.

"Is everything alright?" he asked and gave her a surprised look. Green stood there with her mouth open, just a little bit, so that he should notice that there was something wrong but she wasn't going to talk about it. Sadly, she just looked as if she had recently lost her voice. Or her mind. Or both.

"Can I help you?" the Doctor asked suspiciously, getting nearer to her and giving her a look as if she was a recently discovered and very rare bacillus that wanted to be examined and /or treated. "What's wrong with you?"

"You're a fine one to ask" she hissed while her eyes stayed fixed and she stared into space. Figuratively. Actually she might have done it as well literally if she had had the ability to look through walls…or doors…or the Doctor. Right now she was really hard trying not to cry.

The Doctor revealed his sonic screwdriver and held it up against her head. She had often wondered before if the sounds it made originated from some kind of lethal radiation, so, as a gut reaction, she just pushed his hand aside. She asked him: "What are you doing?"

"Your behavior has changed" the Doctor answered, putting on his glasses.

Oh, she hated his glasses.

How could a man who had travelled alone for such a long time and knew nearly everything still rely on things that ought to make him appear more intelligent?  
"Definitely" he added. "Definitely" she repeated, still starring him in the face. "You should try to keep calm, that might help", the Doctor thought out loud while walking around her "but don't worry we'll find out what's wrong. And what keeps changing you."

"I'm not ch…" Green bursted out but the Doctor pressed his index finger against her lips. "Shh shh shh", he whispered, "you're stressed; you're losing control of your actions. If we only knew what keeps disturbing you."

"You're driving me mad", Green suddenly snapped. Even the Doctor seemed to be surprised at this sudden change, as well in the situation as in her mood. She tossed his hand aside and let out a cry of rage. Although it wasn't too loud he could feel his bones vibrating and felt the whole resonance of this small girl's desperation.  
"Why, why do you even were these?" at cyber speed _(oh, what a witty one, haha) _Green had snatched the glasses off the Doctor's nose and held them tight as her fingers turned white. "It's not as if you need them, they're just glass, there's nothing special about them, you can see right through them!" "That's why their called glasses", the Doctor answered thoughtless, but on second thought, he realized that he definitely should have reconsidered his reply, because you hadn't to be a Time Lord to know what was going to happen next. The Doctor closed his eyes as soon as he had heard the glasses clinking on the ground. He sighed and tried to avoid her glare. "Was that necessary?" he asked after a silent moment in which he hadn't even heard her panting.

"You and your… stupid questions! Always your stupid, stupid…" Green stopped, sobbing and turning her head away from him. He was right. And it was driving her insane. She couldn't control herself. She was different, somehow, she felt different and it felt different inside her.

Green ran off, wherever there was a place to hide in the Tardis. She just didn't want to see him. Again. Or ever again. She needed to be alone. She found herself crouching down behind some kind of pillar, which seemed as weird and unnecessary as the rest of the interior of this strange conveyance. She tried to ignore the strange emotions inside of her and couldn't think of anything else but "If only tonight he would sleep." She didn't know if it was night, or if it was ever going to be night again and it didn't make sense.

But it didn't have to. She wasn't like the Doctor, she was undogmatic and unpragmatic and all the other things that ended with –matic.  
But she couldn't think of anymore of them until she dozed off.


	7. A cup of english tea

"Green."

Green didn't even respond to the whispers in her ear and the fact that someone was stroking her hair and pushing her subtle.

"Green, wake up."

Green didn't care who was calling or fondling her. She didn't know who it could have been, despite the fact that she hadn't seen another human being than the Doctor for days and even he was only a Time Lord, which should be blamed on her mental blackouts.  
The not knowing who was here with her. Not the Time Lord thing.

Her brain seemed to prefer working on bringing back missing knowledge and memories instead of focusing on the present.  
But that was the problem with the humans... always living in the past.

"Green… I made you tea…"

Green turned her head around slowly and opened her eyes after rubbing them.  
The Doctor was kneeling beside her. Green yawned.  
Her back hurt, her head hurt, she didn't know what time it was but figured that it wouldn't matter anyway because she remembered know that she was still in the Tardis with this strange creature that looked like a man and didn't have to sleep, and still it gave her the creeps.

"I'm sorry" the Doctor handed her a cup of tea, Green clutched her anaemic fingers around it and seemed to doze off again while looking at the simmering surface of the dark liquid, "I don't know what kind of tea it is, actually. But I'm sure that it's not that bad anyway. See, the little piece of paper at the end of the string of the teabag got wet and is therefore unreadable." He inspected the cup closer again. "But I'll give you my word: this is definitely tea."  
"What else could it be?" Green asked tired and didn't dare to take a sip.  
"Well…" the Doctor thought out loud, "I'm convinced that, whatever it is, it's completely harmless."

Green looked back and forth between the cup of tea in her hands and the Doctor who grinned in a strange way.  
"Why don't you try it first?" she asked suspiciously. "Look, I'm not trying to poison you" the Doctor replied, "I just thought I'd prepare some tea for you. You don't have to drink it and it's definitely not going to kill you. I don't expect it to affect you in any way at all. It's only tea, Green!"  
Green nodded and yawned. "I must apologize" she said after tasting the tea, "I was just a bit surprised… I didn't expect a friendly gesture from you. I'm not used to you caring for me."  
"Don't get used to it" the Doctor hissed under his breath but Green ignored it.

"I'm sorry. That was a dumb thing to say. We've just met and I don't really know who you are."  
The Doctor sighed and prepared already the stereotypical phrases concerning the time travelling in a police box, his origin and the "what's happened to your home planet?"-thing.  
"But don't worry. I'm not going to bother you with stupid questions. I don't care who you are and where we're going. You seem trustworthy…"  
Green smiled because she knew that this was a decision you only make once. In the one case you were right and the person you trusted was actually trustworthy. In the other case you didn't have any time to regret the decision you made because the untrustworthy person would soon use your trust to your detriment. In other words: you were dead.

Green looked around. Mh, she still seemed to be pretty alive. She shrugged. Probably the toxic was affecting her slowly. But that wouldn't be so bad either.  
She had dreamed of dying slowly. In fact she had dreamed of dying a lot lately.  
Not that she had slept that much. But nevertheless.

Every time she closed her eyes. There it was…  
There THEY were…  
The voices.  
The same word over and over again.  
Every time…

The buzzing noise of the sonic screwdriver jolted her out of her thoughts and she opened her eyes again.  
"What are you doing?" she asked the Doctor and pushed his hand aside. "Just a bit of scanning…" he mumbled and, to take a closer look at the results, pulled out his glasses only to remember that they had suffered deterioration. In other words they were broken because Green had thrown them onto the ground.  
"What a shame" he sighed and placed them on top of a see-through glasses box and, by pressing a button, let them fall into the box that was now flashing up in blue.  
Green interrupted the doleful Doctor by saying: "Has it ever occurred to you that those sounds are probably warning you not to stand too close to the screwdriver when it makes those particular noises?"  
"It's a sonic screwdriver" the Doctor mumbled, "It's supposed to be sonic."

He had found some old magnifying glasses and tried to decipher the results with their help.  
"What does it say? Let me see it…" Green tried to snatch the sonic screwdriver out of his hands, but he reacted faster.  
"Oh, no, don't touch it" he held it up in the air and therefore it was out of Green's reach. She couldn't help it. She was short. Although she preferred the term "small".

If someone had wanted to call her "short" her last name should have been "Cake".

"You have a tendency to cause destruction" the Doctor went on and pressed some more buttons beside the glasses box, which now sank into the surface and disappeared with the broken glasses.  
It caught Green's attention, but only for a second. "There are no results, are they?" she asked, "You just keep using the sonic screwdriver on me, secretly wishing for my head to explode one day due to the destructive effect the sounds and the radiation may cause!"  
"Green, calm down" the Doctor sighed.

Green picked up the tea she had set aside and took a sip. Then she breathed out slowly.  
"Okay, I'm fine… I'm calm and composed…"  
"Good" the Doctor added.  
"…but I still don't trust your screwdriver."  
"Either way, I can't give it to you" the Doctor explained, "you couldn't read it. It's Gallifreyan."  
Green crossed her arms. "And what does it say? Something Gallifreyan for "made in china"?"  
"You sure are fun to have around" the Doctor mumbled. "It says something about your current status…"  
"Like state of mind…" she added.  
"Could you please stop interrupting me?" the Doctor snubbed. "It's really getting on my nerves!"  
Green nodded. "Sorry." You're a fine one to talk about other people's moods, she thought to herself. The Doctor looked at the monitors and walked around in the Tardis again. Green didn't dare to follow him. In addition, she didn't even know what he was doing. But she had reason to believe that he didn't know it either.  
The only thing she was curious about was how he got this vehicle of transport in the first place. But maybe someone else had made the mistake of trusting him as well…

"Besides, I've had humans before…" the Doctor began.  
Green interrupted him with a low "Gross" but she kept a straight face.  
"IN THE TARDIS…" he completed unnerved, "I've had humans before with me here IN THE TARDUS!"  
Green shrugged. "Sorry."

The Doctor tried it again.  
"No human being has ever before responded to the sounds of the sonic screwdriver with pain"  
"But it's not very nice of you to try something on me that causes anguish just because you want to know why it causes anguish. That's not very humane."  
"I've told you before, I'm not human" the Doctor replied.  
"I know; I was referring to human as in "humanity"…" she bristled with anger. "You can't say humane" without the word "human"" she sighed and turned towards the Doctor again, after searching senselessly through her mind for a word to describe human.  
"For you it's easy, you lucky bastard!" Green pointed out, "You've got the Time Lord thing when you want to explain it and the Gallifreyers when you want to name yourself."  
"Gallifreyans" the Doctor corrected her softly. "And please don't make a fuss about it. I got you're point. And I should have listened more carefully, in relation to the "e"."  
"There's no difference" Green sighed.  
"Of course it is" the Doctor countered, "just say it. One after another."  
"Hum…" Green stopped and mumbled, "That's stupid."  
"I am the Doctor and I advise you to try it."  
Green sighed again. "Human… humane…"  
"No" the Doctor interrupted her, "more humane, than human, more like "pain" in the end…" Green had to chuckle.  
"I haven't heard that one before" Green coughed, restraining her laughter, "but that's a nice euphemism."  
"Like I said" the Doctor repeated, "you're fun to have around."

"Are all Time Lords unhumorous?" Green asked.  
"No" the Doctor replied, "but not all of them had the pleasure to deal with you, I'm afraid..." He stopped speaking in mid-flow.  
"You're pretty nasty" the Doctor stated.  
Green nodded. "I'm sorry... I'm afraid I can't help it..."  
The Doctor pressed another button which caused the glasses box to reappear. He opened it and gathered some new glasses from it.  
Green stared at him aghast. "How did you do that?" she asked and snatched the glasses out of his fingers, giving them a scrutinizing look.  
"It's the Tardis" the Doctor explained, "It can restore incomplete, damaged or broken things." He sighed. "Too bad that I can't use it on your wrist."  
"It's fine, thank you" Green responded quickly and gave him the glasses back. She hid her strained wrist behind her back, just in case he'd get some silly ideas.

"No, seriously, show me your wrist. I guess the bandage should be renewed by now."  
"I really don't think you need to..." she shook her head smiling and held on to her right arm.  
"Green, I'm not going to hurt you." The Doctor grasped her arms and stroked them softly. "And I wouldn't risk attaching you to the Tardis. That would be too dangerous."  
Green sighed uneasy and released her arm. The Doctor rolled up the bandage carefully.  
"You thought it to be too dangerous for the Tardis to be attached to me, didn't you?" Green asked gloomily after long consideration.  
The Doctor didn't answer her.  
"Amazing" he mumbled, "I could have sworn your wrist was broken. But it doesn't look like that at all. It's barely bruised and even pointing in the right direction."  
"That's a good, isn't it?" Green asked.  
"It's strange. It recovered really fast. On the other hand... after two and a half weeks slight improvements can be expected, I guess."  
"Two weeks?!" Green repeated irritated "It's already more than two weeks?"  
The Doctor shrugged.  
"It didn't feel like two weeks." Green sighed. The fact that she couldn't tell how fast time was going by made her feel really uncomfortable. She couldn't feel it. She couldn't sense time.  
She was really missing the clock she had had in her room back home. Actually she just kept it for the tick. But now she missed it. She really missed it. Telling time...

"Those corners of the universe have a bad influence on the sentiments, I know" the Doctor explained and touched her hand carefully. "But don't worry. As soon as we'll set foot on another planet, you'll get used to the time moving forward again."  
"Why don't you have a clock?" Green asked. The Doctor frowned. "Or just a tiny watch?"  
The Doctor rubbed his chin.  
"What would I need that for? The ticking ones are annoying and the ones without the tick are even more useless than the annoying ones."  
"They tell time" Green explained.  
The Doctor shook his head. "No, they don't. They can't."  
Green gave in. She didn't see any chances in discussing time with a Time Lord.

"And besides, an ordinary watch wouldn't last long in here. Give it a few seconds and POOF- both clock hands showing in different directions but through the glass that had covered them. Clocks are irritated by time travelling. They can never decide whether to go clockwise or counter clockwise or just don't go at all. But they can't stop because time is moving while they're stuck making their decisions. Therefore they're doomed to react in weird ways, like sticking their hands through the glass, or knotting them together. Or just split in half."  
"You tried it?" Green asked uncertainly.  
The Doctor nodded. "It's quite fascinating. Every watch reacts differently. But they all stop in the end."

Green tried to consider the matter once more.  
"Clocks die?" she asked irritated.  
The Doctor looked at her in astonishment. And yet he had to smile. He bandaged her wrist again.  
"It's just a manner of speaking" he explained and pushed her hair out of a face. Green glared at him uneasy.  
"I never thought you could be cute" the Doctor smiled.  
"And I never thought you'd say such things" Green replied promptly and cocked an eyebrow while watching his hand carefully.  
"You're not used to receiving compliments, are you?" the Doctor was still smiling.  
"What's that supposed to mean?" Green asked annoyed, "What makes you think that I didn't get complimented?"  
"Oh, I didn't say that" the Doctor corrected, "You could have received a lot of them. I know, you can't remember, thanks to your amnesia. And that's not the point. You just don't know how to deal with a compliment."  
"And how am I supposed to react, in your opinion?" Green countered. "It would be nitwitted just to return the compliment. Despite the fact that it would be really offensive. You're not cute...And that's a good thing! I don't like cute men... Not, that I like you... No, not that I have anything against you either..."  
The Doctor sighed and patter her on the shoulder. "Finished?" he asked.  
"No, but I don't know how..." she mumbled and sighed.

There it was again. Uneasiness. How could anyone like her be uneasy? She felt the uneasiness everywhere around her.  
It hung in the air like the smell of used towels, cold sweat and something resembling an unwashed racoon that would linger in your room for a few days after you've had a nice, intimate meeting with a guy whose name you couldn't recall due to the amounts of alcohol you had consumed and you knew for sure that it would take you at least three times to wash your hair again in order to smell nearly like a human being again.  
Mh.  
Green may have been suffering from amnesia, but the bad memories were still there.

"I'll take that as a yes" the Doctor mumbled and suggested sitting down on the settee again.  
He took her hands. Green gasped. She had nothing against physical contact. At least in a way. But it felt awkward with the Doctor touching her hands in a nearly kind-hearted way.  
As a gut reaction she would have slapped him. As a knee-jerk reaction she... well, she would have jerked her knee and kicked the Doctor in a spot where, at least she hoped, even Gallifreyans get hurt very easily but badly as well.  
But she couldn't decide what to do first and therefore was forced to stay in her current position and try to behave like a normal human being.

"I'm asking you Green... and I mean it, I'm really asking you this. You've visited TANN with me and I must admit that I thereby endangered you. I can't promise that it won't happen again. But what I can promise you is that I'll be there definitely fast enough to prevent you from getting into serious difficulties."  
Green nodded uncertainly but had to ask: "How can you tell?"  
"Innumerable years of experience" he replied indifferently in one breath, "And this is what I can promise you. I'll return you from every planet in one piece. But I want you to know that you don't have to come with me. I could try to find you a nice little place on earth, somewhere around the time when you actually lived there. That's a possibility as well. I can't expect you to stay with me..." the Doctor stopped. He hadn't thought this through and tried to find a telling argument only to give her an actual choice.  
"But I guess it would be much more fun to stay with me. And besides, not all planets are as dangerous as TANN. There are some quite peaceful ones out there." He sighed. "At least if we don't end up here during a war. Or a natural disaster."  
"Happened before?" Green asked.  
"Yeah... well... not that bad actually. Besides... See? I'm still here, standing in front of you in one piece. Tell you what... I should take you to a place where it's really dangerous. There you'd see how easily you can survive. IF you follow my instructions."  
"You survive if you're [SUPERIOR]."  
The Doctor furrowed his brows.  
"I'm sorry?" He looked puzzled. And nearly as puzzled as Green.

Green pressed her palms against her temples and held her breath.  
"I'm sorry..." she repeated in imitation of the Doctor's voice.

The Doctor placed his hands on top of hers. He closed his eyes and listened carefully. He SEARCHED carefully.  
Patiently and with care he tried to enter her mind, looking around in the dark tunnels that led to her memories, or, to be specific, to what was left of them.  
The Doctor had to admit that what he could elicit in the dark was terrifying and fascinating at the same time.  
Most of the people had heard about lost memories, which just disappeared. But gnawed memories... The Doctor took a step towards them. He could feel Green flinching, but he held on to her hand and her head as well, the vision in front of him was too beautiful, too disturbing, too terrifying...  
He had to get closer!

Pictures were gnawed to pieces. Objects showed strange marks on their surface, as if something had tried to find a way through the inside of it. Moth-eaten... no, worm-eaten. That seemed to be a lot closer. But what could gnaw on memories?  
The Doctor had a premonition that she hadn't lost her memories. She KEPT losing them. Something was trying to tear them apart. Or someone...  
There were voices. The Doctor could hear talking behind him. Somewhere in the deepest depths of this labyrinth someone kept talking. The same thing, over and over again. But he couldn't quite understand it. It was too...distant. Something resembling something muffled and metal.  
And he tried to move towards them.

"Doctor, please..."  
Tears ran down Green's cheeks. She sobbed heartrendingly  
"Please don't... Don't... it...it just hurts... please, let go off me... Doctor...please...please" She kept on whispering until the Doctor released his grip and caressed her cheeks. Streams of hot tears moistened his fingers.  
"I'm sorry" the Doctor swallowed and stroked the back of her neck. Green lowered her head and rested it in the Doctor's lap. Her shoulders twitched irregularly and uncontrollably.  
"I'm so sorry..." the Doctor sighed and ran his fingers gently through her hair.

"What's happened?" Green's words came in gasping, hiccoughing sobs. "What was there?"  
"Just some old memories" the Doctor tried to appease her, "Some we'd like to keep forever. Some we'd like to repress. And we'd definitely like to choose not to remember all of them."  
Green muffled something scarcely audible in his lap.  
"We all have them" the Doctor assured her, "and we're all scared of some of them."  
The Doctor put his glasses on and kept stroking her absent-mindedly.  
"Someone's in your head" he mumbled, "someone's there."  
Green raised her head and looked at him with tear-stained eyes.  
"Is this your attempt of soothing me?" she tried to shout but her voice was cracking.  
"Green..." the Doctor wrapped his arms around her, but Green resisted leaning her head against his chest. She wanted to look him in the eye.  
"Green... It's okay now. It's over... you don't have to worry anymore..."  
"I'll come with you" Green sobbed. The Doctor was puzzled about her reply.  
"You asked me if I wanted to stay with you" Green tried to control her breathing and wiped away her tears, ignoring the fact that they kept flowing nonetheless.  
"And I want to stay... I'd love to be with you..."  
The Doctor had to smile at least a bit.  
"...if you never touch my head ever again..."  
Green was still sobbing. But she was deadly serious.  
The Doctor nodded approvingly.  
"Alright..." he mumbled earnest.

The Doctor stood up and turned towards the centre of the Tardis. He inspected the monitors and searched the sky, looking for a particular planet.  
Green, behind him, held her breath every once in a while.

"If you need some privacy" the Doctor explained without turning around, "there are stairs behind you that lead to the basement. It's not that quiet down there, you hear most of the constant sounds of the engines, but you could have some private space."  
The Doctor heard her standing up and moving away from him.  
"And don't come looking for me" Green whispered hoarsely.  
"I won't" the Doctor promised her and waited till her footsteps were no longer audible.

He looked down through the see-through floor.  
He wouldn't have to come looking for her.  
He could watch over her from up here.


End file.
